War in New Zealand over America's Cup fiasco?

by Peter Bidwell on 7 May 2003 What a calamity. It is the only way to describe New Zealand's decidedly leaky defence of the America's Cup in light of the damning review released on Monday.

There is an overwhelming feeling the New Zealand public was badly let down by a less than professional and hugely costly exercise. It is clear Team New Zealand were hardly in a position to successfully defend the cup and spent $90 million, 50 per cent more than the original forecast, in the process.

It amounted to a huge waste and one that will probably never be lived down. The management and the crippling damage to the spare race boat have been blamed for the failed campaign, but as Yachting New Zealand's Peter Lester has said, the sailors had to take a significant slice of the responsibility too.

Skipper Dean Barker would have to be top of that list, particularly as he was also part of the management. If things were not right, and clearly they were not, he was in the best position to have them corrected provided he was up to it.

In the end the sailors were poorly prepared, which comes back to Barker, and they had no confidence in their boats, which turned out to be wildly expensive duds.

Where ever one looks there is the smell of failure and a lack of accountability and proper planning.

It smacks of Team New Zealand having little respect for any of the challengers till it was too late, and a callous disregard of their backers. When strong leadership was called for there was none.

It emphasised how disastrous it was that Grant Dalton was not invited to be the boss till after the cup had gone.

What occurred should result in most New Zealanders saying enough, and wanting to wash their hands off any future challenges.

If you were a sponsor of such a shambolic campaign you would hardly be queuing up to be involved again. After the publication of the report you would be in damage control and hoping people would not start quizzing about what happened.

New Zealanders are not used to such vast sums of money being mis-spent. Other sports looked on enviously and even a little sourly as the cup soaked up so much potential sponsorship money from them, and people gloriously got on the bandwagon created by the cup, including the New Zealand Government.

The Government has even agreed to give $5 million of taxpayers' money to kick-start a possible challenge, which Dalton has the responsibility of putting together.

Monday's revelations will only make an already daunting task more difficult. The first thing potential backers will want is assurance that any challenge is not the lemon the defence clearly was.

While the management has taken responsibility for what happened we have not seen any resignations.

The saga of the cup is sadly among the more sorry in our sporting history and it will more than satisfy those who were long disparaging of big players and their expensive toys.

It is also a reminder of how a sporting campaign can go so wrong when no one takes full responsibility and people have unrealistic expectations of the outcome.

Team New Zealand were supposed to retain the cup 5-0 and ended up enduring that whitewash themselves.