Saturday, June 23, 2007 Libre: Some lessons from a sporting event By Mel Libre Seriously Now
ON Sunday, the most prestigious yachting competition in the world, America’s Cup, gets started in Valencia, Spain. This once-every-four-years event is definitely the Olympics of boat racing.
The enthusiasm among fans of this sport is reaching a level higher since this will pit the winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup Final, Team New Zealand, against defending champion Alinghi, which is bankrolled by Swiss banker Ernesto Bertarelli.
In fact, this is a return bout as Team New Zealand was totally humiliated in its own backyard in 2003, with Alingi in the best of nine races scoring 5-0. What was worse is that Team New Zealand failed to finish in two of those races.
Out of this defeat, Grant Dalton, managing director of Team NZ, was determined to prove that he had a good team that just had a bad day. With four years to prepare, he targeted to raise NZ $150,000 million, designed and built better boats, raced them and challenged Alingi.
Not only was Dalton able to secure major support from Fly Emirates, he got the New Zealand government to chip in $33.75 million.
He has accomplished most of his plans. The team battled the best racers for the pre-America’s Cup elimination round, the Louis Vuitton Cup.
The competition had 12 teams in all five continents, including the over-rated BMW Oracle from the United States, China Team, Shosholoza from Africa, Spain, Germany, Sweden, France, and three from Italy.
Team New Zealand became the first team to go undefeated in the 24-year history of the Louis Vuitton Cup final, winning 5-0 against Italy’s Luna Rossa that took the wind out of the Oracle team earlier.
But what makes this event more interesting is that Alingi has as its skipper/tactician Brad Butterworth, a Kiwi who jumped shipped in 2003 to Alingi and delivered to the latter the America’s Cup trophy. Most of the four million New Zealander’s will be looking forward to next week’s race.
But America’s Cup is not the Filipino’s cup of tea, even though our nation is surrounded by sea and our people have, as ancestors, great sailors who rode on balangays across the China Sea. Also, a number of us have Castilian blood. Those Spanish conquistadors were mariners who once ruled the oceans.
But there are things we can learn from Team New Zealand. Politicians supported the team by providing funds, but did not try to call the shots. Our politicians are in all sporting bodies, thus our teams are suffering from corruption, nepotism and the like.
Also, private entities in New Zealand adopt specific sporting events and see through the success of sports and its players. In the Philippines, we do have a few like the Lhuilliers and Aboitizes in Cebu.
Indeed, dedicated sportsmen can make a difference. Among those who did their share were Jose Sering and Michael Keon (in athletics), Danding Cojuangco (in basketball) and Antonio Aldeguer (in boxing).
Sports requires money, but more than that it needs sports people who love the game and want to do better in what they do.
