Flying boats, silly money not normal

OPINION: We surely are over the America's Cup and the tongue-tied Pete Montgomery ramming yachting down the rest of the country's oesophagi.

After that brief flurry with crazy flying boats, surely the Cup will return to normal, with boats that have a hull below the waterline and crews that fight it out in New York courts.

The Australians saw sense years ago and got out of the nautical circus. They pretty much are happy to endanger their yachting fleet every year in the Sydney-to-Hobart maritime rodeo.

The regatta in Valencia was an obscenity, untold millions spent for just two rides.

Ever-smiling John Key must be bonkers if he is considering pouring citizen's dollars into a Team New Zealand America's Cup bid while on the verge of introducing the world's highest tax on silverbeet and spuds. Let funds be streamed towards hi-tech torpedoes to harpoon the hunter-killer Whaling Maru research boats down in the cold oceans.

New Zealand must take some of the blame for the way the America's Cup has gone. Remember Michael Fay and his daft big boat at San Diego in 1988. He tried to be clever in the same manner as Ernesto Bertarelli, and was outsmarted by Dennis Conner who fronted up with a slippery catamaran.

All that exercise did was embarrass our nation, and yet the merchant banker was eventually knighted. His embalmed KZ1 big boat now pollutes Auckland's Viaduct Basin, New Zealand's version of Lenin's tomb, a tribute to jingoism gone wrong.

Russell Coutts, who must be on Mr Key's fast pathway to a knighthood, is already halfway there as a Commander of the British Empire, and a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

As an inveterate ship jumper, he would do well while he's ahead to join Pete Bethune down south with Sea Shepherd, who at least is trying to keep the oceans in a natural state. If Coutts doesn't do that, you can bet he will end up sailing against his previous employer and hopefully by then, New Zillin won't give a toss.

There must be some money left in sport, even if the small fields in some of the classes at Manfeild last weekend were a pointer to how much the recession has bitten.

On the way there on Sunday, I spotted a corporate jet in takeoff mode at Milson International.

Soon after, airport boss Garry Goodman wandered along at Manfeild, and so I asked him if I'd stumbled on Palmerston North's new international airline. Sadly, it wasn't; the jet was dropping off one of the high-rollers backing a motor-racing teams at Manfeild.

Let's hope an airline happens along soon because there is much risk in motoring to Wellington and its fogging fog.

It struck me, watching the intervention of the safety car at Manfeild, that it was akin to the Duckworth-Lewis system in cricket.

That's invoked when rain falls, and invariably results in an almost unattainable target being set. The safety car intervenes when the yellow flag flutters after a prang and rids the front-runners of their distance advantage.

That happened at Manfeild on Sunday in the New Zealand Grand Prix, when Earl Bamber showed his experience by ducking past front-runner, 15-year-old Mitch Evans. Evans will learn to accept such setbacks as he matures, and he did err at the first corner after the restart.

Bamber's car had apparently been set up for the later laps, and that was how it panned out. Such was the youth of the pack, he looked decidedly senior at 19!

When there's a red light in stockcar racing, the cars must stop and are often returned to their position so the racing margin is maintained. It's not practical in circuit motor-racing and as both drivers said afterwards, "that's racing".

- © Fairfax NZ News