As good as it gets

When Alinghi lost Race 3, Ernesto Bertarelli looked Brad Butterworth in the eye and said: ‘We can win this now.’

He was spot on. SUI 100 was a little faster. Butterworth and Murray Jones were a sliver above Terry Hutchinson, Ray Davies and Adam Beashel. Neither difference was anything like as large as the pre-series expectations suggested, but it was enough. It was only a question of when the Swiss defender won and Emirates Team New Zealand lost.

Each was capable of sailing better yet between them Alinghi and TNZ produced one of the great America’s Cups. Both experienced the inhibiting weight of ­history and expectation. Alinghi, because all their pre-match analysis told them they had the better package; that they were intent on showing they could win without Russell Coutts; and that they could do what only TNZ and Dennis Conner had done before them by retaining the Cup having won it as a challenger.

Team New Zealand? For them, this was all about redemption, about exorcising 2003. In winning the Louis Vuitton Cup, they restored their team in the natural order, as one of the world’s best AC outfits. Yet this wasn’t enough. Only winning would erase the bitter memory of how they had folded in Auckland four years before...

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