America’s Cup and Olympians go MIA from NZ New Year’s Honours list

Gladwell’s Line: America’s Cup and Olympians go MIA from NZ New Year’s Honours list

by Richard Gladwell-Sail-World.com/nz 30 Dec 16:38 PST

Emirates Team New Zealand win the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Barcelona © Ricardo Pinto / America’s Cup

Despite winning the America’s Cup for the third successive time, the historic achievement passed unnoticed in the just announced NZ New Years Honours List.

So too did any of the medalists from the Paris2024 Olympics – which was New Zealand’s most successful Olympics ever. The exception being professional golfer Lydia Ko, who richly deserved her Damehood.

Maybe there were too many – what a nice problem to have.

For the record there were eight events at Paris2024 in which New Zealand won Gold medals – ten if you include Dame Lydia Ko and Dame Lisa Carrington (Womens Kayak). Of the eight events, outside the two Olympic Dames, five were womens events – and included one double Gold medalist.

Further down the medal table there were seven events in which New Zealand athletes won silver medals and three in which Kiwis won bronze medals. New Zealand sailors won a Silver and Bronze at Marseille.

In country whose politicians, and particularly those of the blue hue, so often trumpet Olympic success as being a clarion cry to inspire other kiwis to strive harder for success, the lack of recognition in the NZ Honours list published today is astounding.

The nominations closed for the six months ago, cutting out both the 2024 Olympics and America’s Cup, another example of bureaucracy triumphing over commonsense.

In their Kings New Years Honours List several Paris2024 medalists from the British Olympic team have been honoured, including Ellie Aldridge (GBR) who has been made an MBE for winning the Gold medal Womens Kite.

One could be excused for thinking that all was well in New Zealand, that the country was not in the most severe recession of our lifetimes, and stagflation is just around the corner. All seem to recognise that getting New Zealanders to put in the hard yards, take some risks and succeed is the way to recover the current situation.

There are plenty of stories within the ranks of Olympic medalists, that show plenty of guts and inspiration – which can be overlaid into many business and social situations.

While the America’s Cup might not be everyone’s cup of tea, that should not colour recognition of their achievement on the international stage – or the Kiwi team’s performance in the application of high performance technology – against the recognised world leaders from Great Britain, United States of America, France, Switzerland and Italy. Two of those teams had substantial technology partnerships with long established, and well performed F1 teams – and still Emirates Team NZ won the technology battle with a home grown product.

And that is to say nothing of the amazing stories that so often come out of the Kiwi’s Cup teams of remarkable turnaround from catastrophe – such a high speed nosedives creating severe boat damage in the 2017 Cup, and the two-metre drop of the AC75 in 2024.

Often overlooked is that unlike other sports, New Zealand’s America’s Cup teams have been the shop-window for a $3billion a year marine industry. While it is sometimes hard to point to specifics, those within the industry are quick to point out that a rising tide lifts all boats – and the New Zealand America’s Cup efforts have long created and spread an aura which is to the benefit of New Zealand and its highly successful marine and composite engineering industry.

Rocketlab is one of the darlings of New Zealand industry for its ability to take on the other leading space technology companies. But again it is also overlooked that much of the composite engineering expertise for that program went through the nursery of the America’s Cup team and its in-house design, testing and building operations. Instead of being a clique of imported expertise, as many would believe, most of this talent is sourced straight from Universities and Apprenticeship scheme, and the experience and drive for excellence passed onto a new generation.

The New Zealand Marine industry was one of the major proponents of the MAST Academy and its many stories of success can be read here.

In the early days many of the components for Rocketlab were outsourced to marine composite engineering companies.

Where does Rocketlab now undertake its composite construction? In the former Core Builders Composite facility in Warkworth, New Zealand – created to build America’s Cup boats and components by Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison, and arguably one of the top composite construction facilities in the world, along with Southern Spars and C-Tech.

Conrad Colman, continues NZ’s blindness towards its sailing achievements and the cross-over to the real world issues currently facing Godzone. Currently battling through the Southern Ocean in the toughest race in the world – the Vendee Globe non-stop singlehanded around the world race – which is laced with stories of inspiration.

Colman is attempting to repeat his feat of the 2016 Vendee Globe, where he became the first competitor to complete the course without the use of any fossil fuels.

Sailing MS Amlin he has optimised the 60ft foiling singlehander for all forms of natural energy – solar, wind and hydro – and is generating more than double the power than he needs – which includes a near daily, and highly entertaining broadcast from wherever he happens to be on the planet. He covers the ups and downs of the solo sailing world, and often the look on his face reveals what is about to come.

New Zealand is a country with just 2.5% take-up on domestic generation from alternative energy. But where is the focus on the likes of Conrad Colman – who should be the “poster-child” (he’s 40yrs old) alternative energy generation in NZ, with NZ energy companies queuing to be a naming right sponsor – and using his example to lift the takeup of alternative energy generation, backed by a government and industry program, as happens in other countries to solve the same issue.

Conrad Colman is an outstanding communicator – in the same league as Sir Peter Blake – but goes largely unrecognised. Of course the mainstream media in New Zealand have published not one word on the Vendee Globe, despite having six women competing on an equal basis with the 34 male sailors in the limited entry fleet.

Equally another competitor in the race Pip Hare, who dismasted in the Southern Ocean two weeks ago, didn’t get a mention. She sailed 800nm under jury rig to Melbourne, in an outstanding example of its not how hard you fall, but how quickly you get that counts. Within three hours of the dismasting Hare (50yrs) had cutaway the broken spar, pulled all she could aboard the 60ft IMOCA, erected a jury rig, not too dissimilar to Ceramco on Leg 1 of the 1981-82 Whitbread Round the World Race.

Another outstanding communicator, in the Blake mould, Hare too was back on the airwaves the day after the dismasting with her daily “Slow boat to Melbourne” video show – giving an insight into her raw emotions arising from the incident – followed by by the highs of overcoming a very challenging situation for which one can never prepare.

Unlike Peter Blake’s famous comment to his crew immediately after the Ceramco dismasting, “if anyone is feeling depressed, come and see me and we’ll get depressed together”, Hare had no-one to commiserate with on the foiling singlehander, helpless in the face of advancing southern gales and their high seastates.

Hare’s is another story of inspiration, from someone who started her own ocean racing team with nothing but a bank loan, and a ton of guts and self belief.

And looking to the future, while New Zealand laments the opportunity of not staging the 2024 America’s Cup in its home waters, it now looks to whether it should be hosting the 2027 event, as is its right.

The real question is whether New Zealand can afford the cost of not hosting the next Match in Auckland, given the facilities are already in place.

However reading the 2024 New Years Honours list, we can guess what the answer will be to that vital question.

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