Playing Alinghi's Game Backfires on Team New Zealand
By WARREN ST. JOHN
The New York Times
February 17, 2003
AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Monday, Feb. 17 — Race 1 was a debacle, but Race 2 was the real disaster.
That was how it broke down for Team New Zealand and its skipper, Dean Barker, whose hopes for tying the five-of-nine-race America's Cup against the Swiss team Alinghi were snuffed on the final run Sunday by a brilliant tactical move by Russell Coutts, the Alinghi skipper and Barker's former mentor.
After trailing around the fifth mark by 26 seconds, Coutts moved his boat between Barker and the wind, slowing Team New Zealand enough to allow Alinghi to catch up. A few hundred yards from the finish line, Coutts passed Barker's boat and turned across his bow before cruising on to win by seven seconds in one of the Cup's closest and most dramatic races.
On Saturday, Team New Zealand had been forced to withdraw from the first America's Cup race because of a series of mechanical breakdowns early in the first leg. That one could be chalked up to bad luck. But in the second race, the Kiwis were simply outsailed, and they now find themselves in a 2-0 hole against Coutts, who is undefeated in 11 America's Cup starts.
"It's huge," Jochen Schuemann, an Alinghi strategist, said of the 2-0 advantage.
After the race, Barker could not hide his disappointment. He looked as if he were a sailor who had lost a regatta instead of a single race.
"We made a couple of mistakes and that caused the race to end up being a lot closer than it needed to be," he said. "Alinghi just outsailed us right at the end."
Losing an America's Cup race is never enjoyable, but the way Team New Zealand lost in the second race — after leading around the previous four marks — could be especially tough on Barker and his young crew. The veteran America's Cup skipper Chris Dickson, who headed Oracle-BMW in the challenger series, said the defeat had the makings of a confidence breaker.
"Being passed in the final minutes of a two-and-half-hour race could certainly be devastating," he said. "For a seasoned sailor, every day is a new day, and you can only race one day at a time. But I know from my own experience that when you're young, even though you may have the same skills, you find it more difficult to forget what happened before."
After his latest victory, Coutts is beginning to seem invincible. Breakdowns always seem to happen to the other guy. The wind always seems to shift in Coutts's favor. And in tight situations where tactics make the difference, Coutts always seems able to dominate opposing skippers.
His performance in Sunday's race was strikingly familiar. In the fifth race of Alinghi's match with Oracle-BMW in the challenger series finals, Oracle led around the first three marks only to get rolled by Coutts on the fourth leg. In both cases, as Coutts bore down on his prey, his opponents turned their bows up to challenge Coutts in a reach for clear air. In retrospect, Dickson said, that may have been his and Barker's error.
"Alinghi is very strong in that bow-up, reaching mode," Dickson said. "Team New Zealand has a bow-down, faster mode. It's a matter of using your strengths, and sailing the race your way. Team New Zealand ended up sailing the way Alinghi wanted to sail. What's the best way to beat Alinghi in a reaching game? Don't play it.
"They had a shocker on Day 1 and sailed a 96 percent race on Day 2. Usually you sail at 95 percent and you win the race. It just so happens that a 95 percent or even a 96 percent day is not enough to beat Alinghi."
There were some positive notes for Barker and his crew in Sunday's race. First, their yacht stayed in one piece. Although Alinghi was expected to have the advantage upwind, Team New Zealand made gains on two of three upwind legs, including one duel on the fifth leg that included 33 tacks. The Kiwis' crew work was solid, and on the first run, Team New Zealand picked the shifts and passed Alinghi.
But the jury is still out on the so-called Hula (short for hull appendage), the 20-foot extension beneath the hull that is supposed to add waterline, and speed, to Team New Zealand's black yacht. In Sunday's light air, the boat sailed evenly with Alinghi, but showed no radical speed advantage. The forecast for the third race Tuesday called for winds around 15 knots, which is believed to be the optimum speed for the Hula.
Barker took comfort in the performance of his yacht.
"We know our boat is competitive against theirs," he said. "That's certainly a huge load off our minds. Now it's just up to us to make sure we don't make the same mistakes. It's not going to be a one-sided contest."
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