Why Emirates TNZ will win the America’s Cup 5-0

by Richard Gladwell on 18 Jun 2007
For the 32nd America’s Cup, this scribe is expecting to see a 5-0 win to Emirates Team New Zealand. Here’s why.

Since 1987, (and we’re excluding the Big Boat Mis-Match) all America’s Cups have been won either 5-0 or 4-0 depending on the length of the series (best of seven or best of nine). The exception was in 1992 when Il Moro di Venezia took a race off America 3 by a three second margin for the closest finish of the 20 year period.

While we are on the subject of margins, many remember the painful 31st Match, notable for the two races in which Team New Zealand failed to finish. However in the races sailed, all margins were under a minute, and the closest being just seven seconds in Race 2. So inspite of the obvious failures, TNZ was not that far off the pace, and the gap to be closed is probably not as great as previous cycles.

In all but four of the other matches in 1987, 1992, 1995 and 2000 – a total of 15 races – the margins were all over a minute – comfortable by America’s cup standards. Three of those that were under a minute came in the 1992 America’s Cup and the other the final race of the 2000 America’s Cup – Team New Zealand vs Luna Rossa where the margin was 48 seconds.

So an outcome other than 5-0 would look to be very unusual, on an historical basis, at least. And we would expect the margins to be comfortable. But also should be factored is the Match is now just a four leg race instead of the previous six.

The other piece of history that is relevant is how the Alinghi team was put together in May 2000, and in hindsight, the game for 2003 was pretty well all over at that time. Certainly Alinghi got a big initial and well-funded push early in the piece. They put together an excellent team and program from that point onwards, and did not really appear to miss a beat. The Defender, Team New Zealand was dealt a heavy body blow, and they were unable to recover.

Alinghi also did some unusual things, which in hindsight, worked well for them. The first was that they used SUI-64, the third oldest of the IACC boats in Auckland for 2003 (remember the numbers ran out at NZL-60 in 2000 and at NZL-82 in 2003). So on the numbers scale (given that these are allocated at the same building milestone for each boat) SUI-64 was a old, very well tuned, well worked boat which had the maximum potential worked out of her.

Team New Zealand used the same ploy in 1995, bringing in their oldest boat NZL-32 into the Semi-Finals and spelling NZL-38. However this 32nd America’s Cup and Louis Vuitton Cup is a much more compressed series, and one of the issue is to get enough race time with a new boat, than spare wear and tear on the intended race boat.

Others, including Team New Zealand, used their newest boats in 2003, and were not in the same league.

Russell Coutts, Brad Butterworth, Murray Jones, Warwick Fleury and Dean Phipps were amongst the first signings for Alinghi. These were the old Team Magic, which had been highly successful on the match racing circuit, and spanned key positions in the boat from bow to stern. The combination included a helmsman, tactician, main trimmer, traveller/tactician, genoa trimmer and bowman. So there was a backbone of communication and close working relationship through the length of Alinghi around which the other ten positions could work.

Russell Coutts is no longer with Alinghi, and has not been replaced by another of his calibre. To our eyes the communication chain that was a major strength of Alinghi in 2003 has been broken. (While Coutts was not heard to say a lot during the racing, the communication patter between Murray Jones and Brad Butterworth was excellent. Coutts was clearly tuned into this conversation and auditing it against his own thinking and feel for the boat and race.)

Coutts was an engineer by training (albeit it somewhat more lengthy than usual). He bought to Alinghi an engineer’s mind and design fascination, coupled with a flint hard competitive spirit, excellent match racing skills and an easy cohesion with his band of brothers from Team Magic. That sort of skill combination and chemistry is very rare and hard to replace. Losing Coutts was a serious error in the Alinghi campaign for 2007, as it was for Team New Zealand in 2003.

Alinghi’s second error has been to maintain an apparent rotational policy with its helmsmen, although in Coutt’s stead they have appointed Brad Butterworth as skipper. This has got them into the accepted model (seen really for the first time in 2007) of separating the skipper’s function from the helmsman, where in previous Cup the two have generally been one and the same.

Practicing a rotational policy in key positions, particularly helmsmen, is a mistake in sailing as it is in any sport. It is a far better model to name the key people in the crew early in the piece and then build the rest of the crew around them. Alinghi should have named a single helmsman over 12 months ago, and locked them in place. Every Cup winner in the past 20 years has adopted this practice. The rotating of helmsmen has never worked, even when this has been done early in a Louis Vuitton Cup.

Nervous tension as to the helmsman’s tenure, just doesn’t work. It doesn’t make people perform better.

It may well be that Alinghi have known for some time who their helmsman has going to be, and just haven’t made the announcement. Playing mind games like that is all very well, however experience shows that it doesn’t have the desired effect, and a better course is to be upfront and portray a strong and resolute approach.

The two helmsmen in the frame, Ed Baird and Peter Holmberg have never previously helmed in an America’s Cup Match. NZL-92’s Dean Barker is on his third.

To recap, Holmberg shared the helming role with Chris Dickson aboard Oracle BMW Racing which made the Finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup before being despatched by Alinghi. His previous Cup was in 2000, where he was Tactician for Team Dennis Conner. Holmberg competed in the 1988 Olympics winning a silver medal in the Finn class.

Baird served has tune-up helmsman for Team New Zealand in 1995. He was skipper of NYYC’s Young America in 2000 which finished seventh in the Luis Vuitton Cup after structural issues on their first boat. In 2003 he was tune-up helmsman for Team Dennis Conner being eliminated in the Quarterfinals. He has a strong record on the match racing circuit. Although Baird has won three World Match racing Championships, he has not competed at the Olympics.

Dean Barker is on his fourth America’s Cup campaign, having served as tune-up helmsman fro Russell Coutts in 2000 and sailed the final race to win the Americas Cup in 2000. After Coutts’ resignation in May 2003, Barker was named as skipper and sailed the 2003 campaign. He was again appointed skipper and helmsman for 2007, and this was his first Louis Vuitton Cup. He competed in the 2004 Olympics finishing 7th after a late campaign in the Finn class.

In terms of big regatta temperament, barker definitely has the edge. He also has come back from the crises of 2003, which make him a lot harder character, and one who will be motivated by the fear of failure.

After getting away to a very shaky start in the Louis Vuitton Cup, Barker hit his straps in Round 2, and has grown a foot in confidence every round since. Most pundits have predicted that he would get cleaned out at the starts by more aggressive starting opponents, however his starting statistics are very good. Barker has shown the ability to get out trouble when errors have been made. Clearly he is now the form helmsman of the regatta.

Much is made of the performance of Alinghi in the Acts leading up to 32nd Match. There is little that can be accurately drawn from these. In Act -12, the last time the Emirates Team New