Dubai: Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) skipper Glenn Ashby described his side’s America’s Cup win last week as ‘light at the end of a tunnel’ after the outfit almost folded in 2014.
ETNZ blew an 8-1 lead over Oracle Team USA in 2013 to lose 9-8 in San Francisco in the last edition of the two-boat race, which has been held roughly every three or four years since 1851, making the trophy the oldest in sport.
In a rocky build-up to this year’s race, Auckland were stripped as hosts of an America’s Cup qualifier by the America’s Cup Events Authority (ACEA), losing ETNZ vital sponsorship and funding in a case that has since gone to arbitration.
“We were really looking down the barrel of shutting doors completely,” Ashby told Gulf News in Dubai on Monday, on his way back to Auckland via the UAE from Bermuda where ETNZ lifted their third America’s Cup by thrashing Oracle 7-1 on June 26.
“I remember sitting in a boardroom two and half years ago with just a few of us around and saying ‘we’ve got no money and can’t keep the doors open unless we basically throttle right back to zero and work our way back’.
“We had to take a call in that boardroom that day about whether we folded or stayed open and it was a very difficult time for a lot of us to go through what we did and to be dragged through that mud.
“But to be able to slowly put the pieces back together again with a huge effort from so many people and to ultimately end with a wonderful outcome like this is the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ashby, 39, originally from Australia, was a wing trimmer in the last crew that lost in San Francisco and felt the need for redemption as skipper this year. “After almost disappearing off the face of the earth; to be able to rebuild the team with just a small core group of people; to keep the doors open and then a couple of years later to make it through and win the America’s Cup is a truly remarkable and almost unbelievable story.
“For me personally, it’s a sense of great satisfaction and relief to win the thing and bring it back to New Zealand. I’m sure for a lot of people in our team who were there in the last campaign, that feeling of redemption is strong.”
Of the San Francisco defeat, he said: “It was brutal, we basically got mowed down by Oracle. They probably had a faster boat than us, but simply didn’t sail it as well for the first part of the regatta. Then, as they started sailing better, they eventually mowed us down.
“That loss was brutal for everyone involved and it’s something we’ll never forget, but moving forward, this campaign, we learnt a lot of lessons and put them to good use to create a stronger team. Now we’ve mowed them down, it’s nice to share it around a bit and redeem the loss for sure.”
Emirates airline have been on board since 2004 but this is their first America’s Cup win as sponsors with Team New Zealand’s previous wins coming in 1995 and 2000.
Team manager Grant Dalton praised the airline for standing by the outfit and hoped their support continued into the next campaign in Auckland in 2021. “We had two losses until we won under Emirates but they stayed there and backed us the whole time so congratulations to them, now they reap the rewards of that longevity and faith.
“Now, we just want to get home and start to work out how to defend it — then we’ll start talking to potential partners and obviously Emirates will be one of those that we will be talking to.”
A spokesperson of Emirates said: “Emirates is delighted to have supported Team New Zealand as naming rights sponsor since 2004. It has been a very successful association and one that we are proud of. Let’s focus now on celebrating the team’s well-deserved win rather than discuss future commercial arrangements.”
