Gladwell's Line: America's Cup and Olympians missing from NZ New Year's Honours list
by Richard Gladwell-Sail-World.com/nz 31 Dec 2024 00:38 GMT
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 Year Honours List.
So did any of the medalists from the Paris 2024 Olympics, which was New Zealand's most successful Olympics ever. The exception was 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 Silver and Bronze at Marseille. However, in the past, only Olympic Gold medalists have been recognised in one of two Honours lists published each year.
In a country whose politicians, particularly those of the blue hue, so often trumpet Olympic success as a clarion cry to inspire other Kiwis to strive harder for success, the lack of recognition of Olympic Gold medalists in the NZ Honours list published today is astounding.
The nominations closed for the New Year list six months ago, cutting out the 2024 Olympics and America's Cup, in another example of bureaucracy triumphing over commonsense. In the past America's Cup winners and others have been fast-tracked through the Honours system to make the Honours award recognition close to the achievement.
In their Kings New Year 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 that stagflation was just around the corner. However, most recognise that getting New Zealanders to put in the hard yards, take some risks, and succeed is the way to recover from the current situation.
There are plenty of stories within the ranks of Olympic medalists that illustrate the application of guts and inspiration - which can be overlaid onto 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 homegrown product.
And that is to say nothing of the amazing stories that so often come out of the Kiwi's Cup teams of remarkable turnarounds from catastrophes—such as the high-speed nosedive that caused 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 $3 billion-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 that benefits 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 came from 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 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 is the latest example of NZ's blindness towards its sailing achievements and the cross-over to the real-world issues currently facing Godzone.
Colman is currently battling through the Southern Ocean in the toughest race of all—the Vendee Globe nonstop singlehanded around-the-world race—which is laced with stories of inspiration.
Colman is attempting to repeat his feat in the 2016 Vendee Globe, where he became the first competitor to complete the course without using 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 that 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 has just a 2.5% take-up on domestic generation from alternative energy. But where is the focus on the likes of Conrad Colman?
He should be the "poster child" of alternative energy generation in NZ.
NZ energy companies should be queuing to be naming sponsors for Colman's campaign. They should use his example to encourage the use of alternative energy generation backed by a government and industry program, as happens in other countries, to solve the same issue.
Conrad Colman is also an outstanding communicator - in the same league as Sir Peter Blake - but goes largely unrecognised. Of course, the mainstream media in New Zealand have not covered the Vendee Globe, despite having six women competing on an equal basis with the 34 male sailors in the limited entry fleet.
Similarly, another competitor in the race, Pip Hare, who was dismasted in the Southern Ocean two weeks ago, didn't get a mention. She sailed 800nm under jury rig to Melbourne, an outstanding example of how it's not how hard you fall but how quickly you get that counts.
Within three hours of the dismasting, Hare (50yrs) had cut away the broken spar, pulled all she could aboard the 60ft IMOCA, and 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 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 sea states.
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 Year Honours list, we can guess the answer to that vital question.