America's Cup - Book Extract - Lone Wolf - Pumping the Pedals

by Richard Gladwell on 1 Nov 2017 Book Extract: Lone Wolf - How Emirates Team New Zealand stunned the World

Chapter 8: Pumping the Pedals - the Cup campaign begins

For almost all of its 30-year America’s Cup history, Emirates Team New Zealand has been one of the first to launch a boat in the new America’s Cup cycle. Except for the 35th America’s Cup — when they were one of the last.

That statistic underscores the fact that Emirates Team New Zealand had been forced into running quite a different sailing programme from the other teams and indeed what it had run in seven of its eight previous America’s Cup campaigns.

The 30-year-old team had been given the green light to go ahead and challenge after a review by the team and Board in May 2014. The brutal review had identified 20 key points or strategies for the team arising from the near-miss in 2013.
Entries closed for the 2017 America’s Cup Regatta on 8 August 2014, and uncharacteristically the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron didn’t lodge the challenge until the final day.

That was a harbinger of the team’s precarious financial situation. Emirates Team New Zealand was running very tight on cash flow due to a combination of higher than expected entry fees and bond (US$3 million) and earlier than usual payment date, without any sponsorship flowing in, or even signed.

There were big changes ahead for the team which would shed all but one of its 2013 sailing team, lose its long-serving coach and technical director and come within a few hours of closing down completely.

One of the early losses was coach and Olympic Gold and Silver medallist Rod Davis, who had been with the team for a decade and was now into his twelfth America’s Cup campaign.

Davis was first approached to work with Artemis in March 2014. ‘I had some good talks with Team New Zealand after the last Cup in December. We knew we were going to part ways at that point. The split was very amicable. I got a note of congratulations from Shoebs [COO Kevin Shoebridge]. We’re all good mates, but it was time for a change.

‘Money didn’t have anything to do with it. It is good for me to have new challenges. It is good for Team New Zealand to have a new voice, telling them a new way of looking at it. Ten years is a long time.’ [Davis rejoined ETNZ briefly in mid-December, 2016.]

With no clear plan possible until the shape of the America’s Cup Regatta was disclosed, Emirates Team New Zealand kept race sharp and built a solid base of foiling experience by contesting events such as the International A-class catamaran World Championships at Takapuna. There, skipper Glenn Ashby won his eighth world title in the 18-ft catamaran with team members taking four of the top five places overall. Artemis Racing skipper Nathan Outteridge (Australia) was sixth in the 18-ft foiling singlehander.

There was no America’s Cup World Series operating in 2014. The New Zealand America’s Cup team sailed in the Extreme Sailing Series, placing fourth overall after sailing in seven of the eight events. Alinghi, their nemesis from the 2003 and 2007 America’s Cups, won the 2014 series sailed in non-foiling 40-ft catamarans on tight stadium courses. The Kiwis were the only 2017 America’s Cup team to compete on the ESS circuit.

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke continued with their Olympic 49er campaign, winning the World and European Championships every year to the 2016 Olympics where they won the Gold medal. They were also named Rolex Sailors of the Year in 2015 for the clean sweep of wins in the 49er class and topping the leaderboard on the America’s Cup World Series, that year.
Five members of the Emirates Team New Zealand sailing team contested the 2015 International Moth Worlds in Sorrento, near Melbourne, sailing in both the Australian and then the World Championships. This time there was a classier fleet with several America’s Cup sailors, Olympic medallists and world champions among the 160 entries in the 11 ft-long singlehanded foiler.

Sailing in early January, Dean Barker, Glenn Ashby, Ray Davies, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke again came up against Artemis Racing’s Nathan Outteridge.

Burling gave the fleet a sailing lesson, winning nine of the 14 races sailed. At 24 years old Burling held the 49er World and European Championships and the International Moth World titles.

In early December 2014, the venue of the next America’s Cup, Bermuda, was announced 14 months after the end of the 34th Match. For Golden Gate Yacht Club, a US$15 million event fee and other undertakings amounting to over US$50 million, plus a willing government, had tipped the decision the way of the British Overseas Territory.

Bermuda was not an attractive venue to several of Emirates Team New Zealand’s sponsors, and the team was forced to slash budgets by 20 per cent — a rare occurrence in America’s Cup campaigns, where budget escalations of that magnitude are the norm. The cuts had to be made very carefully to avoid compromising the success of the campaign. Essentially that meant that the team had to adopt a similar one-development boat, one-race boat style of the last two campaigns — which was a higher-risk option, given that both had gone close but failed to win the America’s Cup.

At the time of the Bermuda venue announcement, the delicate prospect of the Qualifiers being sailed in Auckland was still being negotiated and signed off — which would have secured funding from several government agencies.

Originally the team strategy, born out of the May 2014 review, was to have a twin AC45 development programme with Burling at the helm of one and Dean Barker on the other. That would have provided a vital check and balance on the vexed crew selection issue, and enabled boat upgrades checked on the water boat against boat, rather than boat against the computer. With two AC45S boats and crews, they could gain vital match-racing practice, with the experienced Barker-led crew pitched against the more flamboyant and unorthodox style of Yachting New Zealand’s NZL Sailing Team.

After the decision for the Match to be sailed in Bermuda, the two boats were cut back to just one AC45S boat and crew. Dean Barker was not reappointed as skipper. The new strategy was a much higher risk, but the team had to live within its budgets and it would require careful management with no mistakes.

In a statement issued by the team in late February 2015, the role of team skipper appeared to have been abolished, and helming duties were to be shared between wingsail trimmer, A-Class World Champion Glenn Ashby and 49er World and International Moth Champion Peter Burling.

At that stage, Emirates Team New Zealand had re-signed several of the crew from the 2013 campaign — Ray Davies, Jeremy Lomas, Winston Macfarlane and Derek Seward — and with Burling and Tuke aboard there was a good mix of fresh but Olympic-hardened thinking and school of hard knocks America’s Cup experience.

As we know, Barker declined the Perform-ance Coaching role that Emirates Team New Zealand had offered, and took up an offer three months later to be helmsman, skipper and CEO with the new SoftBank Team Japan. Lomas, Macfarlane and Seward joined him, leaving a big hole in the sailing team. They were also joined by long-serving technical director Nick Holroyd.

Emirates Team New Zealand’s 2017 cam-paign started in earnest on Monday, 2 March 2015, with the team swelling to 50 full-time staff — half that of the 2013 campaign at its peak. The 20-strong design team that had been running part time for a year stepped up to a full-time basis, with new design team members starting.

With a sailing team now of just four sailors, Emirates Team New Zealand embarked on a crew search and selection ahead of the first regatta in the America’s Cup World Series, staged in Portsmouth, England in late July 2015.

After not winning the 34th America’s Cup, there were widespread calls outside the team, in New Zealand, for new blood to be brought in. That process was started in January 2014 with the introduction of Peter Burling and Blair Tuke to the sailing squad and the forging of a partnership with Yachting New Zealand, instead of the previous distant to non-existent relationship with the national body for sailing, epitomised by the pre-2013 scrap between the two outfits over use of the stylised fern graphic on the NZL Sailing Team uniforms.

In their talent search, Emirates Team New Zealand looked to the two crews who placed first and second in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup sailed in San Francisco. Also in the viewfinder were more members of the NZL Sailing Team, and as it turned out the wider New Zealand Olympic team. Bringing new sailors without America’s Cup experience into the team helped reduce the salary budget significantly.

The direct hook-up with the NZL Sailing Team (from which the Olympic team was drawn) was a first for any team in America’s Cup history. It was a move which developed in all sorts of directions and exceeded all expectations — both getting Emirates Team New Zealand out of a tight spot, and providing a pathway for all young sailors to the high-profile professional sailing team.

In its promotion of the sport, Yachting New Zealand could point to most of the sailing team as having gone through its programmes — setting the ambitions of a kid that was having his first sail in an Optimist with those who were winning at Olympic and professional sailing levels. The power of that linkage cannot be overstated. However, pathway aside, the raw talent and competitive hardness to win still needs to be there in the young sailors. They don’t hand out participation certificates in America’s Cup racing where there is no second.

The move made a huge difference to the media profile of sailing. When competing at the 2016 Olympics, some of the shine would rub off onto the America’s Cup team (in a non-America’s Cup year). And when the America’s Cup was being sailed (in a non-Olympic year), the Olympic sailing programme would share the America’s Cup spotlight.

Sailors running in both campaigns received a salary from Emirates Team New Zealand, as well as funding from Sport New Zealand via Yachting New Zealand’s High Performance Programme. Sailors still able to fit in tertiary studies were also eligible for Prime Minister’s Scholarships, which at least partially funded their education. In turn, many of the sailors then undertook courses of study that were relevant to the Olympic and America’s Cup programmes. Peter Burling chipped away at an engineering degree until the time demands of professional sailing took over.

The trick with the new talent, who had no previous America’s Cup experience, was to get them up and beyond the standard of the other teams.

While some looked askance at the de-partures of experienced sailors from the team, calculations after the last America’s Cup showed that only two of the sailing squad in San Francisco would be under the age of 40 by the 2017 America’s Cup.

Those coming on board lowered the average age to the late twenties. Emirates Team New Zealand was the youngest team in Bermuda and had a strong base for the defence in 2021, plus a conveyor belt of talent coming from Yachting New Zealand’s programmes, if more talent was required.

In early October 2015 Emirates Team New Zealand came to a working arrangement with the self-exiled Luna Rossa, bringing the Italian’s former skipper, the highly experienced Max Sirena, in on the operations side of the organisation. Also joining were six other members of the Luna Rossa design and sailing team.

As well as people, the Italian team loaned the New Zealand team one of their first-generation foiling AC45s. The wingsailed foiling catamaran had two major upgrades from the Italians, and Emirates Team New Zealand gave it a third.

Lone Wolf - How Emirates Team New Zealand stunned the World is published by Upstart Press Ltd

This is the first book on Team New Zealand in 30 years (the first being KZ-7 published in 1987). There were strong advance sales for Lone Wolf and with just 3.5 days of sales included it was ranked 4th in the non-fiction book sales in New Zealand. Now that all video, social media, official website content and the entire America's Cup image libraries covering the 34th and 35th America's Cup has been removed, Lone Wolf is the only record available for public purchase of the 35th America's Cup.

Copies are available through all good bookshops in New Zealand or for readers outside New Zealand the book can be purchased from the publisher click here or other international sellers such as Mighty Ape

Because of the compressed timeframes for writing and producing Lone Wolf copies may not be available immediately from your favorite international bookseller.

When ordering, the ISBN for Lone Wolf is : 978-1-988516-09-7

Lone Wolf is written in a photo-journalistic style, in full colour and consists of 208 pages plus approximately 140 illustrations covering Team New Zealand's involvement in the America's Cup from March 2003 to June 2017, with the primary focus on the period September 2013 to June 2017. The above extract is five pages of a 16 page chapter.