SECOND THOUGHTS After leading 8 races to one in last year;s Americas Cup finals and then being blitzed from that point on, I was quick to hop on the bandwagon and give Team NZ a serve for being chokers when faced with a cut-throat, tough as iron, hard as nails, Australian like Jimmy Spittle. I thought that Spittle just stared us down in the same way the despised Chappell brothers stared us down in cricket. I also scoffed at Team NZ for hinting that Oracles boat was a cheater and then failing to have the balls to take that any further. I thought we were just whingers. I was also quick to say we should get over the whole Americas Cup thing and move on to something easier — like creating a Formula One team! But now, I look back at the tension that gripped NZ and how we were late for work day after day, watching the racing and thinking that tomorrow MUST be the day . . And, the other night, I watched the TV coverage of the announcement of the next challengers and saw the way Dean Baker and Jimmy Spittle reacted to each other and I thought that there was something going on there. There was something very, very deep there, more than a bad loser and a bad winner. And this morning, the NZ Herald has a story from a long-time Team NZ member who says the Oracle boat was a cheater but it was so advanced and so out there that for Team NZ to have challenged it would have meant exposing too many of their own secrets. Time to get even I reckon.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:08:35 +0000