Well, here is chapter 2 of The Team New Zealand story 1995 - 2003 book which is New Zealand goes cup hunting:
Think of the America's Cup & the names roll out - from the modern age the Americans Turner & Conner. Australia's Bond & Bertrand plus the Kiwi trio of Fay, Blake & Coutts. They're readily associated with the contest. It's much the same with those from earlier times - Lipton, Vanderbilt, Sopwith, Stevens & ...
Hang on, Stevens? Yes, Colonel John C. Stevens.
Now that's a name that's not synonymous with the America's Cup as it might be, certainly not among those New Zealanders converted to the event since Team New Zealand's successes.
But Stevens could be thanked & cursed for what the America's Cup is today. He should be classified in the same breath as both a sporting villain & a hero. A hero because he was the catalyst for an event that stands as the world's oldest & arguably greatest sporting competition.
But a villain as well because this exceptional contest has also been a magnet for some of the most inappropriate conduct the sporting world has witnessed.
Then again, it's that mix of the glorious & notorious that's ensured the America's Cup is such an irresistible event. And why it can be revered one moment & reviled the next. There's never a dull moment in the America's Cup.
Yet when Colonel Stevens happened on the scene he can't have imagined his escapades would lead to what the world sees today, a battle that generates both fervour & rancour. Nor can he possibly have conceived global outposts Australia & New Zealand would ultimately figure so strongly in the cup's annals. After all, New Zealand hadn't long secured its nationhood through the Treaty Of Waitangi when the colonel breathed life into his now grand trophy in 1851. If truth be known, he probably didn't know New Zealand existed.
But through the ages men with vision, passion & tenacity have helped create a rich tapestry that sets the America's Cup apart from all other contests.
And it was the pursuit of this previously elusive prize that has ensured New Zealand is now the most successful country outside the United States in America's Cup history. The quest for victory compelled Sir Michael Fay & Sir Peter Blake to their names added to the cup's folklore, ultimately with contrasting results.
To understand why the event has always meant so much to so many means trawling back through time to the deeds of John C. Stevens & others who followed.
As the New York Yacht Club's first commodore, Colonel Stevens relished a challenge. He had a daredevil sense about him combining passions that sat comfortably beside each other - he was both an adventurer & a gambler.
So in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, he was driven to sail his twin masted schooner America to England to race against the British. He had glory on his mind & he intended making some good money at the same time.
The British weren't so enthusiastic about taking up the colonel's proposition of racing up to 10,000 guineas. It was, after all, clear to them that America was vastly superior to any yacht Britain could line up.
Stevens was invited instead to sail in the Royal Yacht Squadron's annual regatta around the Isle of Wight with the One Hundred Guinea Cup at stake.
The Americans cleaned up. No big money for the colonel but he did have some booty to show for it in the shape of this cup.
That the One Hundred Guinea Cup would eventually be transformed into an obsession for a succession of the world's richest men surely can't have occurred to Stevens at the time.
But he clearly had something reasonably grand in mind. That became evident in 1857 when he & his syndicate presented the cup - a bottomless jug - to the New York Yacht Club for international competition. It's that cup & that competition that are now known as the America's Cup.
It was still some time before the New York Yacht Club was able to mount its first defence of the trophy. With the American Civil War intervening, it wasn't held until 1870 when Sappho dissmissed James Ashbury's Cambria, sailing under the flag of the Royal Thames Yacht Club.
More than 150 years on, the cup has been associated with everything imaginable. There's been drama & controversy aplenty, no amount of celebration & desolation & loads of mystery. And tied up in all that have been countless & often graphic illustrations of greed, envy, corruption, deception, abuse & cheating.
That shouldn't be too surprising. Obviously John C. Stevens wasn't averse to having the odds stacked in his favour & the America's Cup has unearthed a string of personalities since who have displayed many qualities widely viewed as repugnant.
That, though, makes the competition what it is.
The statistical record seems to portray the cup as a dull affair through the Americans going decade after decade without relinquishing it, & not looking like they would. In fact, before 1983 the Auld Mug was defended in a total of 85 races yet, of those, challengers won just nine.
In a perverse way that made the cup an even more magnetic prize. Some day someone had to relieve the Americans of their valued possession. The pursuit of it has seen so many famous characters involved, both on the defending & challenging sides.
It's impossible to delve into the past without mentioning Sir Thomas Lipton. He knew an awful lot about tea but not so much about sailing. That never stopped him fervently pursuing his burning passion to take the cup back to its original home.
He first tried with Shamrock in 1899 & tried - & tried - another four times after that without unlocking the secret. Shamrock II in 1901, Shamrock III in 1903, Shamrock IV in 1920 & finally Shamrock V in 1930 all proved futile attempts; although Sir Thomas had glory in his eyes after winning the first two races in his 1920 challenge against Resolute only to be swamped 3-2 in the end.
Another standout personality was Harold S. Vanderbilt who three times defended the New York Yacht Club's honour in 1930, 1934 & 1937. The second & third of those campaigns pitted Vanderbilt against another noted owner & skipper in T. O. M. Sopwith, the avation magnate best-known for the First World War planes that made him a millionaire.
And moving into the modern era, Ted Turner - absolutely dripping rich - introduced a new phase with his successful 1977 defence at the helm of the marvellous Courageous when he hammered Alan Bond's Australia.
Bond. Now, there was a name connected with mystery. It would also become one of the most celebrated in this yachting game, although the man would later bring so much shame on himself as well.
Before that he changed the face of the America's Cup forever.
Bond first entered the frame with Southern Cross in 1974. His bid faltered 4-0 then & his original Australia had to suffer another whitewash in 1977 plus a 4-1 defeat by Dennis Conner's Freedom in 1980 before his breakthrough.
But in 1983, with John Bertrand helming Bond's Australia II, one of the sporting stories of the century unfolded.
Locked at 3-3, Bertrand & his crew outwitted Conner's Liberty to take the match 4-3 & hand the Americans their first defeat in the cup's 132-year history.
Stevens had started it all when he won what became the America's Cup - the One Hundred Guinea Cup - in 1851. In the 24 defences from 1870 through to 1980, the Americans had barely been stretched until Bond & Bertrand took the trophy off American soil for the first time since Stevens had won it.
That reverse ironically opened the way for Conner to carve his own very special chapter as an America's Cup legend. Even more significantly it enabled New Zealand to stake a claim in this richest of rich men's games - & Colonel John C. Stevens wouldn't have counted on that happening in 1851.
For the big wigs from the New York Yacht Club had to be accustomed to life without the Auld Mug. Worse than that, the club's top brass had to accept some interlopers from somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere had taken the trophy from its so-called rightful home at Newport, Rhode Island.
Losing to skipper John Bertrand & his Australian crew was extremely difficult for Conner. He chose to avoid the presentation ceremony & left immediately for his home town of San Diego to reflect his defeat & his future. Perhaps that could be forgiven but not so justifiable was the decision by the New York Yacht Club's commodore Robert McCullough to flee as soon the final race is over.
In Born To Win Bertrand wrote: ''The commodore, who had been such a terrible antagonist in all the controversy over the (winged) keel & the legality of our design, did not bother to say goodbye to his own skipper, so he certainly was in no mood to say goodbye to the America's Cup.
''In fact, I thought this was not very sportsmanlike, & did not show him in a particularly good light.''
At least the hierarchy at the New York Yacht Club knew Australia existed. They'd become used to the Aussies by 1983. Australia had broken the sequence of British challenges when Sir Frank Packer's Gretel had a challenge in 1962. After that Dame Pattie & Gretel II were followed by Bond's failed bids using Southern Cross & Australia. That still didn't make it any more palatable for the New York Yacht Club losing in 1983, although it could be argued the club should have seen it coming.
What it would hardly have anticipated was that Australia's small neighbour in the South Pacific would soon become an even more dominant force in America's Cup racing.
The New York Yacht Club knew something of New Zealand. That's because of Chris Bouzaid, whose exploits in winning the One Ton Cup in 1969 opened the door to the yachting world for New Zealand. Having lived virtually on the club's doorstep he was signed to run the sails programme for the New York Yacht Club's unsuccessful challenger America II in Fremantle in 1986-87 (he later wished he'd been able to help New Zealand but by then he was committed to the Americans).
It was in Western Australia that New Zealand's ties with the America's Cup began when Auckland merchant bankers Michael Fay & David Richwhite mounted a brave & infectiously enthusiastic challenge. Provided the financial backing could be found & sustained in future years, it was obvious that summer that the Kiwis would become very big players from a very small country in the America's Cup.
They were undone by a touch of naviete first time out. In KZ7, the New Zealand Challenge syndicate had a rocket ship & one the world envied.
Dennis Conner preferred to infer there might be something sinister in the boats tagged 'plastic fantastics'. Why, he asked, would anyone want to build boats with fibreglass unless they wanted to cheat?
Instead of mounting a measured campaign, the New Zealand Challenge threw everything into the regatta from the outset & then seemed to have very little development left for the business end. That's where it probably lost it, allowing Stars & Stripes to advance to the America's Cup match where Conner duly won for the San Diego Yacht Club. He may have suffered the shame of becoming the first man to lose the prize but he savoured the jubilation of being the first one to regain it.
Fay's second shot at winning the cup in 1988 was yet another major turning point in the path of this colourful regatta.
While the yachting world waited for Conner to announce the venue & timing for the next event Fay, now titled Sir Michael, & his lawyer Andrew Johns studied the America's Cup Deed of Gift & issued the Big Boat challenge on terms allowed by the Deed.
Johns was probably the first person to read the Deed of Gift for many years and this challenge drew everyone's attention back to the fact the America's Cup is a trophy designed whose destiny is reliant on a challenger - a trophy to be defended, not offered.
The San Diego Yacht Club cried foul, accused Sir Michael of ambush & applied to the New York Supreme Court for an injunction to stop the challenge.
San Diego must race, it was decreed. So it fronted with a catamaran! And, of course, it won.
Back to the Supreme Court, Sir Michael gaining judicial agreement that the San Diego club's catamaran was an ineligible defender. San Diego wouldn't settle for that ruling, lodged an appeal & won it on the grounds that there was no mention anywhere in the Deed of Gift that America's Cup competition had to be fair.
Although to many onlookers it appeared the America's Cup had hit an all time low, behind the scenes designers from around the world were taking the opportunity to create a new design rule that would produce a new & exciting class of yacht.
The traditional 12-metre design was slow & no longer attracted interest from spectators. So the Big Boat challenge became the catalyst for the new International America's Cup Class (IACC) which would reignite interest in the contest.
The 1992 regatta in San Diego was Sir Michael's final attempt to bring the cup back to New Zealand. With a new management structure responsibility for the campaign to designers, sailors & sailmakers, the 1992 effort was New Zealand's boldest & most costly challenge so far.
The Farr team designed four new yachts & Sir Michael's syndicated moved 140 people to San Diego for 18 months to leave nothing to chance. But when it became obvious the management team needed help, Sir Michael approached Peter Blake & asked him to take control.
This was the challenge based around the boat dubbed ''The Red Sled''. otherwise known as NZL20. The Farr-designed machine was radical featuring a tandem keel & a supposedly innocuous bowsprit. It turned out not to be so innocuous after all.
The New Zealanders found themselves leading Italy's Il Moro di Venezia 4-1 in the Louis Vuitton Cup final, just one win away from challenging for the America's Cup.
By then this game of high stakes had become heated.
Paul Cayard threw in a series of protests against the use of the bowsprit - & succeded.
With the fifth race result overturned, New Zealand's lead was cut to 3-1 but most of all it to reassess the way it used the bowsprit. The resulting dent in the Kiwis' confidence was matched by a simultaneous leap in confidence by the Il Moro crew. Cayard drove his men to new levels & the Italians began to exploit the speed advantage they had finally discovered in their yacht.
It was the beginning of the end for NZL20 as Cayard recovered to win four races on end for a 5-3 triumph - only to be swamped by Bill Koch's America3 in his challenge for the cup.
It also closed New Zealand's first chapter in the America's Cup. Sir Michael Fay's role as backer & founder of New Zealand's challenges was over but the vast pool of knowledge that he & David Richwhite had created was made available to a new team hungry to succeed.
What Sir Michael didn't realise then was that he held the secret to future success in a discontented skipper & a man Sir Michael had signed as his syndicate manager. Neither man gained a high profile in the 1992 campaign but learned their lessons well.
Three years later their names would become the stuff of America's Cup legend - Blake & Coutts.
So that is my 262nd blog of the year 2019 (MMXIX) & my 2nd of this year.
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