Go you good thing

To be honest when flicking between the All Blacks and Team NZ's first America's Cup race on Sunday morning I thought we were looking at another 5-0 loss.

But oh no - Team New Zealand has fought back and now lead 2-1 after what is being lauded as one of the greatest Cups ever - in that its a competition this time, with the last three cups being 5-0 routs.

Of course the Cup has a great history of close competition. In 1983 Australia II came from behind to win 4-3 over dirty Dennis Conner's Liberty - the first time it had been won by someone other than the US. In 1987 off Fremantle in Western Australia, NZ entered for the first time and somehow it captured the imagination of the whole country. That year we sailed KZ-7 - who could forget the huge spinaker sail emblazoned with the logo of the BNZ? Our boat that year was the first to be constructed from fibreglass - all the others were made of the conventional aluminium, leading Conner to quip - "why would you build a glass boat, unless you wanted to cheat." We lost the challenger series to Conner's Stars and Stripes who went on to win the cup for the US again.

In 1988 there was dumb NZ Challenge with the big boat (KZ-1) - essentially we got cocky, rocked up to New York and said "lets have a race with whatever boat you've got" - they pulled out a catamaran with Stars and Stripes livery - and we got smashed. This lead to more famous Conner quotes - "Im sailing a cat..... somebody else is sailing a dog" and of course the subtle press conference dig "Get off the stage losers, this is for winners". This whole debacle led to all sorts of court challenges which saw the cup awarded to New Zealand, and then given back to the US on appeal. This led to a new class of yachts being born - the International America's Cup Class, which is what we currently have.

In 1992 we challenged again, this time with a red boat - NZL20. Again we made the Louis Vuitton Challenger final, and after leading 3-1, our innovative bowsprit was deemed illegal - and we lost to Il Moro di Venezia of Italy. Il Moro went to lose in the America's Cup anyway to Bill Koch's America3 4-1. This all of course set it up for the Black Boat - NZL 32 to take the cup in crushing form in 1995, 5-0.

So anyway after intending this to be a short "hey we won again" post - ive managed to blah on about all the Cups I can remember!