2 – 1
Amazing race. Things looking good considering they started off the pace and had a stuff up part way through.
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June 27th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I stand by my prediction here a week or so ago. We will win 5-1 or 5-2.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Neither deserved to win with all the mistakes.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Gooner,
That was a bold prediction, and still is, though events may well prove you right. I certainly hope so.
It is very telling that Alinghi appear to have the faster boat, and should have been 3 zip up by now. I think they may be paying the price for
1: Getting rid of Russel.
2: Not having a defender series.
It is still too early to claim that the afterguard in Alinghi are dysfunctional, but there certainly are cracks showing.
To lose a race by making a mistake is one thing. To have the other team make a mistake, get into the lead and then lose because of your own mistake is quite another. It has to be demoralising.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Did anyone else want to watch the highlights on LabourTV – whoops, sorry, TV One at 7am this morning? Then, having managed to avoid the result before watching the highlights, have the flipping state propaganda merchants – whoops, sorry, state broadcasters show the result on their four minute news package before the highlights! Thanks for bleedin’ nothing TVNZ!!!!
June 27th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Highly amusing to listen to Brad Butterball’s whinging and excuses. It seems Brad is one of those people who always blame someone else for their own failures.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:56 am
If we are fated to win this damn cup then I think they should give it to that Maori fella and tell him to go at it with his hammer again, and we can call it the America’s Plate. Or, if we don’t win it, then like australia, can we just forget about the whole damn thing. Remind me again why we spent 40m of tax payer money on this and we have to fund raise to get footy boots for kids from Naenae?
June 27th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Its called marketing Brian
Spend money on marketing, sell more stuff.
More stuff sold, more tax take.
More tax taken than money spent originally = good investment.
This is different than spending money on Hip Hop tours and the NZSO.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Hey Brian dont be such a petty minded jerk.At least NZ gets a return on that investment.Contrast that to the billions commie Cullen and his mates poor down the gurgler annually for no return.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I agree that it appears Alinghi have a slight speed advantage, very slight. But of the 12 legs raced so far we have won 6 of them. That may mean it will be 5-4 perhaps, but our months of competition in the LV Cup will be the key I believe. You can’t beat hard competition. We are *sailing* a lot better.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I wonder if Helen is rearranging her diary so that we can pay for her to do a quick flit over to Spain and be “18th man” on the America’s Cup-winning race.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I hardly think being concerned with 40m given to rich boys to play is being petty minded. They already have access to international funding already. Emirates is a Kiwi company I think, isn’t it? Personally I think the money was spent so that the PM and Mallard could get a few good photo ops.
I’d rather have seen that money spent on Junior development in all sorts of sports and codes. Even if it was spent on yachting it would buy a lot of poor kids P-Class yachts.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
brian
Or the other way of looking at it, is that it will inspire poor kids to try P-class sailing.
You’ve got to have something to aim for. Our sailors do very well for themselves around the world,its a real career now.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I’m with you Brian!
June 27th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Think small, borrow more.
NZ’s business plan.
June 27th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
I’m a bit surprised at how much whinging is coming from the Alinghi camp — today with the “ooh mummy, we shouldn’t have had to race today because it was haaaard” and the previous race with “ooh mummy, the spectator boats are making it buumpy”.
I could be wrong, but if ETNZ had lost this morning (as they could so easily have) I don’t think we’d be hearing whinging from them — or from Alinghi! ETNZ would have been all “it’s a long series” and “we’ll be out trying to win tomorrow”.
I suspect that right now a few Alinghi sailors are genuinely scared of seeing retirement fund size bonuses evaporating before their eyes.
June 27th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Did anyone else want to watch the highlights on LabourTV – whoops, sorry, TV One at 7am this morning? Then, having managed to avoid the result before watching the highlights, have the flipping state propaganda merchants – whoops, sorry, state broadcasters show the result on their four minute news package before the highlights! Thanks for bleedin’ nothing TVNZ!!!!
yep. pissed me right off. Soon as I saw the headline of a “thrilling” finish, I knew we’d won. The TV girl commented it was one “you won’t want to miss”. Had ETNZ lost, the headlines would have been about the sky falling, etc. I will know to tune in at exactly 7:05 tomorrow.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Also a bit of a laugh to hear Russell Coutts contradicting “Pete Montcommentary”
Pete: “OH my the excitement as team new Zealand takes the lead again!”
Russell: “yeah well they aren’t actually in front, they still have a port tack before the mark…”
haha! He won’t be invited back. The nerve of the boy! Knowing more about yacht racing than the commentator.
June 27th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Hope for Dalton and Barkers sake they have their day in the sun, both have a monkey to exorcise.
Had to laugh at the language from the Swiss in race 1, can’t imagine a kiwi being that much of a wanker, I suppose the Swiss don’t have much else to crow about, looked like Butterworth is on the same medication as Dennis the menace Conners!
NZ win 5-2 and Brad Butterworth not on the boat at the end.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Would Alinghi’s Dean Phipps have been angry that the race had been held if Alinghi had won?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4109844a10.html
Reactions from Phipps and Butterworth put Alinghi into an uncomfortable pyschological space. Meanwhile, we understand that Dean Barker and his team are now well trained to focus on each race as it comes, and nothing else, until it is all over. They did it in the Vuitton cup even when they were 4-0 up and they are doing it in the final. Based on the psychological game, TNZ may well pull off a win, regardless of the merits of individual boats.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
With a bit of luck Alinghi will self-destruct in much the same way Oracle did when the going got tough. As Bruce pointed out above, Alinghi have done nothing but whinge each time they’ve lost. At the press conference after round 3 they sounded like a bunch of spoiled brats.
As for Brian Smaller (small by name, small by nature), I watched the race live on TV during prime time here in Europe. For three hours the name ‘New Zealand’ was emblazoned across the screen and the commentators spoke, at length, about how many talented sailors come from NZ, about our harbours, and about how talent, ingenuity and effort can overcome a (relatively) small budget and even about LOTR!. You simply can’t buy that kind of advertising for NZ, irrespective if Emirates isn’t a NZ company (they do fly to NZ though).
For a long time NZ was known as the country with 3 million people and 60 million sheep. Then along came Peter Jackson and these days NZ is referred to as the place where the LOTR was filmed. TNZ’s designers and sailors are more than doing their bit to shape the way NZ is perceived. 40m is a ‘small’ (there’s that word again) price to pay.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
The level of excellence that ETNZ are exhibiting as a team and in technological advancements, is a reminder to all New Zealand how this country once use to confront and make its way in the world on a daily basis… before we all went mad and lost our way industrially, educationally, socially, morally and the degradation of the importance of personal achievement and responsibility.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Matthew Mason made good points when he said that Alinghi choose the venue (and the timing) from the many available to them, and that conditions were often much trickier during the Louis Vuitton Cup. HTFU, in other words…
I recall at least on occasion in this year’s LV cup on which the wind went around so far that a downwind leg became an upwind leg!