Updates Needed!

GloriousEmpire, at his most benevolent and informative was keeping us updated on the Americas Cup. Now although it was not a rugby competition, it was International and did feature rugby players as crew. I was delighted to see the community based underdogs smacking the horrid, corporate funded yanks all over the 7 seas. However the updates have gone very quiet. Did NZ secure the whitewash? Is it over? Please GE I need to know how it stands.

The US financed Kiwis have leveled the series with the Dubai financed kiwis.

Ah well you see, I lost interest when NZ were 8-1 up and led by 2km For the third race in a row only to have the race "abandoned" as they approached the finish line. So after they led in the next two races to discover those didnt count either because the wind was too high or blowing from
The wrong direction I thought...this is ass.

At that point I thought. Wow, this is yet another Americas cup stitch up. The rules will continue to be altered until the Americans unexpectedly and yet so entirely expectedly win the remaining 8 races, and the hilarious thing is that the British media will be convinced that it is all because their mascot is being financed by the American team to ride in the back of their boat.

blackcanelion wrote:The US financed Kiwis have leveled the series with the Dubai financed kiwis.

Thanks

Of course according to the BBC the comeback is due to the sole(?) Brit.

But yknow, nice schadenfreude, I had no idea you were so insecure.

LondonTiger wrote:Of course according to the BBC the comeback is due to the sole(?) Brit.

It's just like John Gallagher all over again.

Cyril wrote:

LondonTiger wrote:Of course according to the BBC the comeback is due to the sole(?) Brit.

It's just like John Gallagher all over again.

Or in a similar vein, Simon Mason

GloriousEmpire wrote:Ah well you see, I lost interest when NZ were 8-1 up and led by 2km For the third race in a row only to have the race "abandoned" as they approached the finish line. So after they led in the next two races to discover those didnt count either because the wind was too high or blowing from
The wrong direction I thought...this is ass.

At that point I thought. Wow, this is yet another Americas cup stitch up. The rules will continue to be altered until the Americans unexpectedly and yet so entirely expectedly win the remaining 8 races, and the hilarious thing is that the British media will be convinced that it is all because their mascot is being financed by the American team to ride in the back of their boat.

The race was abandoned because 40 minutes of racing had elapsed.

I realise why, but the point is the organisers allowed the race based on the wind conditions being sufficient as they were throughout the race, and they called off the race for time reasons when it was quicker for the boats to complete the final leg (a matter of seconds) rather than abandon it. It makes no sense and following that incident the rules were changed.

They essentially make it up as they go along. It would be like a game if rugby being called off in the 79th minute with one team ahead by 50 points because they had to reset a scrum and didn't think they'd fit in the reset scrum by the 80 minute mark. It was a travesty of natural sporting justice.

Granted it might have taken oracle a while to finish but that's because they'd modified their boat and removed the bowsprit they needed to sail with a low wind code zero sail. The organisers essentially tipped the competition into a wind pattern that solely suits the American boat. So beyond that the regatta was skewed unfairly in favour of the defender and hence my lack of interest in the inevitable outcome.

As adjudication for sailing is to America so rugby is to New Zealand.

Cyril wrote:As adjudication for sailing is to America so rugby is to New Zealand.

 

Frankly they should go back to an all conditions fair contest like needing to sail around the Isle of Wight (or preferably Rangitoto) because this regatta has been a farce (proviso : unless ETNZ wins tonight in which case it was just a fantastic sporting spectacle - important to recognise and be comfortable with your own bias I think)

It's all on tonight. Do or die final.

Both teams are tied.

Oracle will win it now, their boat is just faster in most conditions that they are allowed to race in. Nothing you can do about that.

You'll no doubt switch to team USA then...

Russell coutts is a legendary kiwi and now head ops for oracle. But no way they're a bunch of cheating turn coats and represent the dark side of the force.

Surely no worse than the England rugby team and you supported them for a while!

I tried. But I lost respect for them.

 

I hope Team NZ manages to avoid the choke and goes on to win the America's Cup.

However, it must be very disheartening for the team to realize that so many of their countrymen have turned out to be, as Stuff.co.nz calls them, "glory supporters".

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/share-your-news-and-views/9202400/Americas-Cup-Team-USA-is-better

In a sport that only really comes around once every four years, New Zealand has an amazing ability to suddenly jump on the bandwagon and become crazed and passionate supporters.  Don't get me wrong, I'm one of them...My frustration arises over how the dynamic of this support changes when our team gets under a bit of pressure...

... We further showed both our faces when Oracle tactically used their get out of jail free card and decided not to race in the afternoon session when they had lost three races on the trot. Bad sportsmen, manipulating rules, figuring out another way to cheat... it all came out.

Sure it was frustrating, but it's in the rules. No one complains when a test batsman uses his right to call play on a day's cricket when the umpires' light radar dubiously claims it's dark. Is the batsman supposed to say, actually I can still see, so please, continue?

We were also screaming again when we're sailing towards victory and get pulled up for running out of time. I agree, it's a stupid rule, especially when the wind speed was three times that of the minimum limit for racing, but we knew these rules before the Cup. We saw the effects of it in the Louis Vuitton, and no one complained there, so why is it all of a sudden such an issue? Are we that nervous about this that we expect them to bend rules just because we sailed a good race on match point?

Oracle have performed some kind of engineering marvel in short time to create an incredible come back which is entirely based on improved boat speed and their ability to foil upwind in a stable way.

It's a triumph for their boat builders and performance tuning team...unfortunately a boat building unit based in Warkworth just north of Auckland. 

However before we salute the fine sportscraft of team Oracle and berate NZ sportsmanship lets remember the facts:

1. Team Oracle have been caught deliberately cheating once already and were fined, had crew members banned and were docked points. Sporting?

2. The team is headed up operationally by famous Kiwi turn-coat Russel Coutts who after winning the cup for NZ turned his back on his country and left taking vital team secrets to the Swiss who farsically won the greatest sailing trophy in the world despite being a landlocked country...using borrowed sailors and Team NZ's technology.

3. The cup has been turned into a billionaires plaything by the elite few who have bent the rules to the extent that an entry costs upward of £100 million PER BOAT. Effectively crushing the regatta as a contest of merit. 

4. If team NZ win today, OTUSA will immediately launch a legal challenge to have the sporting outcome overturned in court.

So enough of the tall poppy syndrome. Yachting is the second most fanatically followed sport in NZ and we are rightly proud of our accomplishments in the arena which rival the All Blacks in terms of global ubiquity of kiwis in prominent positions. Were entitled to a bit if a grizzle in the face of such an impending disappointment.

No doubt it was caused by more norovirus for the nation that just does not lose.

U.S.A!!!

Believe me Cyril. NZ has plenty of practise at losing the Americas cup. We lost convincingly without winning a race in the second defense in Auckland and then got wiped out when we fielded a big monohull and Dennis Connor snuck a catamaran through the design rules with the help of a legal challenge. 

If oracle win, as it seems they will, they'll deserve it. But it doesn't mean it won't hurt like hell. 

But whilst your schadenfreude has you barracking for Oracle bear in mind that the boat was designed and built by New Zealanders,
Crewed mostly by Aussies and kiwis and is led by Russell Coutts, another Kiwi.  "Team" USA is just a band of roving mercenaries who've represented many different cou... Oh! I see the appeal to you suddenly.

Last word on Russell coutts...I forgot to mention that for his infamous Swiss challenge he aligned himself with a man who's family fortune was amassed producing Thalidomide and Zyklon B. Morals, huh?

Well that's it. The yanks won with superior upwind speed. 

Congratulations to them.

It was weird alright- such a difficult sport to understand. How from 8-1 down in a race to 9 a boat can be changed that much is beyong us mere followers.

And 3 races where we were leading called off for too much wind, not enough wind and one where we're a kilometer ahead going for race 9 because we couldnt make the 40 minute cutoff (set purely for tv audiences) by a minute or two.

Doesnt worry me that we didnt win it as it doesnt fit the usual sporting events that Im used to. Well done Oracle..though difficult for us lay people to understand what on earth happened.

John Key tweets:

https://twitter.com/johnkeypm/status/382968272011816960

GloriousEmpire wrote:

1. Team Oracle have been caught deliberately cheating once already and were fined, had crew members banned and were docked points. Sporting?
.

And if they had credited two wins to NZ rather than dock two the other way it would have made a diff as well...one things for sure, we werent supposed to win this, and it must go down as one of the biggest comebacks in all of sport.

The France 99 comeback hurt more.

Well done oracle, they had the better boat and we tried within the rules that were set by oracle and signed by all involved that allowed them to incorporate an auto trimming device made by Boeing.

Some cruel fate for TNZ with how it transpired but you have to hand it to em after the flack they copped early on in the regatta and after they pulled that sickie mid way through.

Rightyo, time to flush the dunny and crack on with some real sport

Rugby Fan wrote:John Key tweets:

https://twitter.com/johnkeypm/status/382968272011816960

We have an advert where all sorts of cr_*ap things hapen to people all resulting in the word 'bug)*&ger', including the sheepdog at the end...it will have come from that for sure.

ebop wrote:The France 99 comeback hurt more.

Well done oracle, they had the better boat and we tried within the rules that were set by oracle and signed by all involved that allowed them to incorporate an auto trimming device made by Boeing.  

Some cruel fate for TNZ with how it transpired but you have to hand it to em after the flack they copped early on in the regatta and after they pulled that sickie mid way through.

Rightyo, time to flush the dunny and crack on with some real sport

yeah comparisons already being made for this weekend versus the Argies. Difficult not to take their thoughts off the Bok match next weekend. Huge challenge to get through these two with wins. Massive.

GloriousEmpire wrote:Believe me Cyril. NZ has plenty of practise at losing the Americas cup. We lost convincingly without winning a race in the second defense in Auckland and then got wiped out when we fielded a big monohull and Dennis Connor snuck a catamaran through the design rules with the help of a legal challenge. 

If oracle win, as it seems they will, they'll deserve it. But it doesn't mean it won't hurt like hell. 

But whilst your schadenfreude has you barracking for Oracle bear in mind that the boat was designed and built by New Zealanders,
Crewed mostly by Aussies and kiwis and is led by Russell Coutts, another Kiwi.  "Team" USA is just a band of roving mercenaries who've represented many different cou... Oh! I see the appeal to you suddenly.

Yeah, but thankfully Ben Ainslie, an Englishman, stepped in to teach that motley crew of chancers how to do it. Phew, one of sport's greatest comebacks eh GE. And as I always said, the Americas Cup, the pinnacle of sport.

LondonTiger wrote:GloriousEmpire, at his most benevolent and informative was keeping us updated on the Americas Cup. Now although it was not a rugby competition, it was  International and did feature rugby players as crew. I was delighted to see the community based underdogs smacking the horrid, corporate funded yanks all over the 7 seas. However the updates have gone very quiet. Did NZ secure the whitewash? Is it over? Please GE I need to know how it stands.

 

GloriousEmpire wrote:Last word on Russell coutts...I forgot to mention that for his infamous Swiss challenge he aligned himself with a man who's family fortune was amassed producing Thalidomide and Zyklon B. Morals, huh?

Wow, if you'd told me that earlier I might have rooted for your guys.

If you read the Torygraph, Ainslie came in, completely took over strategy and dragged the team to victory through sheer force of will.
 
If you read the New York Times, Ainslie was completely incidental to the whole affair.
 

Yeah I won't be able to read the British press for a month.

The funny thing is, 99% of the British people I might are fantastic individuals but you'd never know that if you only British media publications.

The thing with yacht racing at this level is that it's all about the technology.

ETNZ had a cup of tea and waited for oracle to clear the start area before they casually sailed past them in the first eight races. Whatever oracle did to their boat meant even when barker blitz the start and got a healthy lead the exact reverse happened in the next 8 races. It's all about the foil configuration. Oracle seemed to find a way to power up the blades so they could get their fat hulls out of the water. They were just so fast yesterday that where and how they sailed made no difference as you could see by the shocker of a race they sailed, dipping the bow at the first mark then that crazy wild gybe hitting the first mark. 

ETNZ were probably guilty of sitting on their laurels, whilst oracle continued to improve. The annoying thing is that NZ pioneered the foiling technology which other syndicates had abandoned and then the engineers on oracle improved it. Standing on the shoulders of giants whilst the giant was sleeping. Sloppy management that and that was the game. Notwithstanding Ainslie is clearly one of the worlds best sailors im sure they would've won just as nicely without him.

LondonTiger wrote:GloriousEmpire, at his most benevolent and informative was keeping us updated on the Americas Cup. Now although it was not a rugby competition, it was  International and did feature rugby players as crew. I was delighted to see the community based underdogs smacking the horrid, corporate funded yanks all over the 7 seas. However the updates have gone very quiet. Did NZ secure the whitewash? Is it over? Please GE I need to know how it stands.

Tiger, sure we lost, however one would have to agree that it was a brilliant effort by team New Zealand but it was also a brilliant tournament by all that participated throughout the defender and challenger series, you are lucky to have a fantastic match racing sailor like Sir Ben Ainslee but now is the opportunity for England to also participate in the next tournament. ( since New Zealand is too far away). Larry Ellison was a gracious winner, describing Team New Zealand as a great team, and New Zealand a country that produces great sailors, and that "The Americas Cup without New Zealand is not conceivable".

There goes my plan to return to NZ as an Oracle consultant anyway. You guys are stuck with me for a bit longer.

GloriousEmpire wrote:The funny thing is, 99% of the British people I might are fantastic individuals but you'd never know that if you only British media publications.

Same with New Zealand folk and you really. Although I imagine we only see your 'online' persona and you're probably ok when you're not tapping away on this forum.

Well deserved win for USA

Your sudden interest in yachting astounds me Cyril. Welcome onboard, and I look forward to continuing our shared keen interest continuing consistently into the future.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

So it was actually 11 - 9 to USA with a good old Aussie as captain

Sad thing was throughout this the NZ commentators never mentioned the differences in technology until today. Then the sour and bitter grapes were out in masses. "The physicists and scientists, won the cup for the USA" that's all we heard. I wish the kiwi could understand that people beat you on merit and skill and it is not the kiwi who gives the game to the opponents. It sickening arrogance. Enjoyed talking like a yank all day at work it was fun:)

I have almost no interest in sailing and I don't really know anything about it. I am occasionally made to watch it by MrP who did a bit of sailing before we met but I usually have to ask who is winning, much to his disgust.

However, I was glued to the coverage of that final race.

Well done to whoever organised a sailing race that I could follow!

It was amazing!

Have to hand it to Coutts and Larry Ellison. It was an amazing sight watching cats race at 40+ knots. Shame Oracle didn't break into 12 pieces when they bow-dived at the reach mark. That would have added the final bit of missing drama. But other than that it had it all.

The physicists and scientists angle was taken up by the NZ commentators because it's a fact. The Oracle boat was just faster upwind after it's remodifications. Personally I prefer it to the insipid content free coverage we got on Sky Sports in the UK. Where two pundits who seemed to know very little about the sport, the technology, the crews or the history sat in a cheap fibre-board set and re-hased the concept that the team who went around the course fastest would win. But hey, at least they covered it.

Let's hope there is a British entry in the next America's cup. Britain has a long and albeit not proud history of never winning the cup after losing it first up in 18-whatever it was. So it's about time they put their money where their mouth is and mount a challenge.

Best America's cup ever. Great sport.

GloriousEmpire wrote:Have to hand it to Coutts and Larry Ellison. It was an amazing sight watching cats race at 40+ knots. Shame Oracle didn't break into 12 pieces when they bow-dived at the reach mark. That would have added the final bit of missing drama.  But other than that it had it all.

The physicists and scientists angle was taken up by the NZ commentators because it's a fact. The Oracle boat was just faster upwind after it's remodifications.  Personally I prefer it to the insipid content free coverage we got on Sky Sports in the UK. Where two pundits who seemed to know very little about the sport, the technology, the crews or the history sat in a cheap fibre-board set and re-hased the concept that the team who went around the course fastest would win. But hey, at least they covered it.

Let's hope there is a British entry in the next America's cup. Britain has a long and albeit not proud history of never winning the cup after losing it first up in 18-whatever it was. So it's about time they put their money where their mouth is and mount a challenge.

Odd how it was never mentioned when NZ were 8 - 1 up.  Poor losers.  Money where their mouth is?????  NZ put diddly squat into their canoe, sponsors will look elsewhere now I imagine.

Well done rainbow. Never let vehement anger and a lack of knowledge get in the way of expressing a random flailing opinion revealing your inner anxiety.

GloriousEmpire wrote:Have to hand it to Coutts and Larry Ellison. It was an amazing sight watching cats race at 40+ knots. Shame Oracle didn't break into 12 pieces when they bow-dived at the reach mark. That would have added the final bit of missing drama.  But other than that it had it all.

The physicists and scientists angle was taken up by the NZ commentators because it's a fact. The Oracle boat was just faster upwind after it's remodifications.  Personally I prefer it to the insipid content free coverage we got on Sky Sports in the UK. Where two pundits who seemed to know very little about the sport, the technology, the crews or the history sat in a cheap fibre-board set and re-hased the concept that the team who went around the course fastest would win. But hey, at least they covered it.

Let's hope there is a British entry in the next America's cup. Britain has a long and albeit not proud history of never winning the cup after losing it first up in 18-whatever it was. So it's about time they put their money where their mouth is and mount a challenge.

Not sure about that, despite our science and engineering background being second to none - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/24206119

The problem for me is that if it comes down to technology, it's not a sport. Hence motor'sport' is not a sport at all, it's driving, fast. A skill? Fine, but a sport? No. Ainslie can keep his stack of golds though because at least the playing field was level.

Your previous point on the British media is absolutely bang on. We piffle on about having the 'freest press' blah blah, but the standard is often woeful.

so its down to money then? Don't the UK have loads of oligarch's pottering about London with nothing to do with their money?