Dammit. Well at least we went down with a fight in a pretty exciting race 6 finish, but still... America's Cup is left without an American challenger. This is just flat out pathetic. America's Cup starts Feb. 15th and will feature Team New Zealand vs. Alinghi (switzerland) who is actually a strong portion of last America's Cup Team NZ crew. About half the team is Kiwi's. These races are actually gonna be on ESPN like 2000's AC and LV Challenge. I can't stand OLN so I'm glad I won't have to watch their sh**ty broadcasts anymore.
Wow, I'm not the only one who watched some of this and enjoyed it. Anyone else catch some or all of the races?
OLN's coverage did suck, compared to past ESPN broadcasts. I just couldn't get into it this time whereas previously I used to stay up all night to watch the races. I think the competition has deluded itself with all the free agent, cross-nationalities of the teams. It would be very wise of the America's Cup to make changes to mandate the sailors of a sponsoring team must meet certain residency requirements or make it full-blown national teams like a World Cup. I half think Chris Dickson purposely blew the races for Oracle so that his native New Zealand would face weaker competition in the final.
That's absurd, McCracken. This is a competition for extremely wealthy sailing enthusiasts. Alinghi has been the boat to beat for awhile, and we'll see if the kiwis can do it. From the beginning, Dennis Conner raved over that boat, and the crew is as good as it gets, too. It will be kind of funny if the Swiss boat wins it, their being landlocked and all. Would they have the next one on lake Geneva?
I was thinking the same thing. I guess they would race in the Med somewhere, maybe off the coast of Genoa (Italy). Either there or Bay of Biscay, but it won't be in Switzerland, that is for sure. It would be pretty weird, having to host in another country. And I agree with Mike, it's sad the US couldn't get a boat in there, but Alinghi was too good. I hope they beat the Kiwis.
There's some outstanding sailing lakes in central europe, I think it'd be great to sail there. The Med is disgusting, friends of mine who sailed in the '92 games in Barcelona described dead horses and antique refrigerators floating through the course. OLN's coverage would have been better without Dawn Riley; the woman doesen't know how to sail and can't speak more than a couple of sentences of commentary without dropping a name or two. Though i thoroughly enjoed listening to her make wrong call after wrong call. And I've never been a big fan of Chris Dickson, he's vastly overrated; he's one of those full-of-himself big mouth kinda sailors (sorta like Dawn Riley in fact) who have far more bark than bite. Peter Holmberg is better than Dickson, though Holmberg is a Maverick and neither is as good as Coutts, Butterworth, or the current afterguard of the Kiwi boat. Oracle was slower in a breeze, and just plain not as smart. GREAT first effort by Larry Ellison though, I look forward to future challenges from him. I have to say I like Coutts/Butterworth's chances of taking the cup to Europe, and I hope it happens. It's about time a Cup was held in Europe.
You're absolutely right, the game is diluted for those reasons. Though it must be said that sailors do have to establish residience in the country they're representing by a date defined by the deed for that particular cup. Having said that it's not hard to establish residency; basically you just move to the country you're going to represent a couple of years before the cup, and you're good to go.