In this web-exclusive documentary, Greg Pearson talks to a number of the crew of Black Magic about Team New Zealand's 1995 campaign on the 20th anniversary of their historic America's Cup victory.
"Little ol' New Zealand has just won the America's Cup . . . that's pretty damn good" – Peter Blake.
On May 14 1995 Team New Zealand sailed into history, and the country celebrated.
Skippered by Russell Coutts, Black Magic completed one of the most dominant campaigns in America's Cup history with a 5-0 sweep of Team Dennis Conner, taking the Auld Mug from the United States for just the second time in 144 years.
"We didn't have a chance," said Conner, who had previously beaten New Zealand challenges in 1987 and 1988. "We couldn't have done anything differently. I have to give a lot of credit to New Zealand. They had no weaknesses . . . a great crew and a fine boat."
The numbers speak for themselves. Through the 43 races of the Louis Vuitton Cup and America's Cup regattas Team New Zealand's boats NZL-38 and NZL-32 lost only once on the water, and the margin of victory in the 5 Cup matches against Conner was close to 3 minutes.
"The America's Cup is not just a yacht race. We've conquered our sport's Mount Everest." – Russell Coutts
PART 1 - ORIGIN
After 3 unsuccessful challenges Sir Michael Fay's quest for the Cup ended, and nearly New Zealand's involvement.
It fell to Alan Sefton and Peter Blake, who had been called in to manage the 1992 campaign, to lay the foundations that were to become Team New Zealand.
Sir Russell Coutts – helmsman and skipper
"The previous 10 years were each in their own way important building blocks for where Team New Zealand ended up back in 1995"
Simon Daubney – trimmer
"I don't think we would've been anywhere near as good in '95 had we not gone through the '92 campaign, which probably was…yeah it was definitely the most dysfunctional America's Cup campaign I've ever been involved with."
Peter Montgomery – commentator
"I think there was a feeling amongst a lot of people that a challenge from New Zealand wouldn't happen again after '92. So it was to credit of Alan Sefton and talking Peter Blake into coming back and working out the logistics on what they could do financially that they got going."
Lady Pippa Blake – Sir Peter Blake's widow
"When the opportunity came to do it again in 1995 at first I think he had some thoughts because he had some other challenges he was keen to do in his life. But then it became very obvious quite quickly that it was something that he felt possibly a bit of pressure that it was something he should do for his country. And he was fantastic at managing people and being a leader. So it all came together."
Bob Fisher – sailing journalist & America's Cup historian
"Every campaign needs a good leader, a really good leader. He was the leader. Not on the boat, but he was the leader. He kept the whole thing together, kept the people away from the people who counted. Yeah he did a wonderful job, and sadly died too soon. But if you've got a leader, you've got a chance. And boy was Peter a leader. Great admiration for that man."
Brad Butterworth – tactician
"Myself and a lot of the guys that sailed with him in other projects and knew him very well had no problem with him taking it on. We actually were actively encouraging him to take it on because you knew you needed a guy like him who had that sort of stature to be able to talk the sponsors with the money to actually make the where with all to do the campaign."
Simon Daubney
"When Blakey started putting the whole thing together there was a couple of sailors involved in that whole process of what to do and whatever, and we just worked for nothing out of the Crow's Nest at the Squadron. Mike Quilter and I were the sailors, couple of the business people, Alan Sefton, Ross Blackman and Blakey and just started working on the whole thing from there."
Russell Coutts
"He (Blake) came in and said 'I was involved with the last one, I've seen it but it really wasn't the way I liked to run the campaign. I want to do it differently this time. We've got in some ways greater constraints.' And I remember him writing the budget up on a whiteboard in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. It was a very open process."
Warwick Fleury – trimmer
"It was a shoestring budget, absolutely. Especially for doing two boats like we did. It would have been easy to say 'we can do this quite comfortable, we'll just build one boat' but we decided that we really did need to do two boats to be a really serious campaign, and that certainly was true."
Russell Coutts
"I'm not sure that a lot of people outside of the team, even the ones that were funding it, really believed Team New Zealand could win it on a budget that small."
Simon Daubney
"Actually, he (Blake) and Russell they shared traits in that they had out responsibility. They say 'righto, that's your department and there you go.' And they're going to rip you if you screw up or something's not there or you've forgotten something. But apart from that they just let you go. You get a team like that where everyone's given that much responsibility like that and feels that and has to contribute, the sky's the limit."
PART 2 - DEVELOPMENT
With the campaign off the ground – albeit with a smaller budget than previous campaigns – Team New Zealand set about designing their boats, with an approach different than had been done before.
Russell Coutts
"In the previous campaign the boat turned up in a box, with the sailors – most of them hadn't seen the boat before. It was very, very secretive, internally and externally. The NZL-32 campaign was a lot more open in both ways. That was a fundamental cultural change.
Brad Butterworth
"We had very good designers. Laurie Davidson: fantastic, one of the best designers ever. And Doug Peterson did a great job. And so we were a bit spoilt in that respect, but we were limited."
Simon Daubney
"It was unique in the way, and it was a first this has to be said whereby the sailors were the clients. The designers and the team were working for the sailors.
Jeremy Scanttlebury – mastman
"We had a very, very strong relationship between the sailors and the designers. It was very much a sailors-driven designed boat, and I think that was one of its strengths. And probably one of the first America's Cups that had such a relationship with the designers.
Tom Schnackenberg – navigator
"The designers were walking in through the same door each day as the crewmen and the shore team and management. And so it was obviously a lot better when people could just grab a designer at lunchtime or the afternoon and just say 'can you show me what you're doing?"
Simon Daubney
"We were innovative. This was a very innovative boat. There's a lot of stuff here that had never been done before, with the mast and on the sheeting systems and everything like that. That was the environment. Everyone was going 'what if we did this, what if we did that.' It's just fuelling this thing, people encouraging ideas from any department, if you're not in sails but you've got an idea – 'how about we do this, how about we do this.' Some might come to you and say 'this might be a stupid idea but what about…' You'd get some good ones out of that as well."
Warwick Fleury
"We had to be very very sure of chat we were doing. We had some idea, some very good ideas, innovative ideas ended up on the boat but you had to be able to sell it to the team, or to Peter at the end. If you've got this really good idea, well that's good but it has to work. If we put something on the boat and it didn't work that was a crime because it was wasted money."
Tom Schnackenberg
"We had a budget and Peter was very strong that we couldn't increase it. He was also strong that it wasn't going to decrease – so that was good because sometimes that can happen. And so whenever we needed an extra $20,000 or so for a new model for example, if we didn't have it in the design budget we really had to scramble around and see if we could get it out of the lunch budget or something like that. We had to sell the importance, and that was a good discipline of course because it meant you were always evaluating the merits of every expenditure."
Warwick Fleury
"There was enough in the budget to build sails to get us to the finals or to the Cup. Might not even been to the Cup, it might have been the Louis Vuitton Final, and he (Blake) figured if we get that far he can go back to the sponsors and they'll give us the money to go the rest of the way. But that's how tight it was."
PART 3 - THE DOG
With their first boat NZL-32 in the water Team New Zealand began trialling against NZL-20, the boat from the 1992 challenge, and made a discovery: the new boat was fast.
But with other syndicate keeping an eye on their progress, this proved to be a problem.
Brad Butterworth
"A bunch of us were involved in '92 obviously so we were using the final boat 20 for our lead-up trial horse. And when we put 32 in the water, and 38 we sailed against 20, and obviously we realised made a quantum leap in speed."
Warwick Fleury
"We discovered to our surprise quite early on that we had something pretty special. So we thought 'well gee this is pretty good, we've got to keep it secret now.' So we just started putting these rumours out there."
Peter Montgomery
"There was a lot of misinformation that was coming out of Team New Zealand. And I know Jane Dent who was reporting for TVNZ incurred the wrath of Peter Blake because on one report they played barking sounds as though the boat was a dog. It was a classic case, and this definitely came from Russell Coutts, only tell them what you have to."
Warwick Fleury
"We were going to buy a whole lot of black paint and paint 20 which was red, paint it black and that was the boat that was going to be going up. And it was amazing how easily that some of those stories were sold. I think people like to believe what they want to believe. And so we had a lot of fun with that, with these rumours, that the black boat 32 was a dog.
Craig Monk – grinder
"We sold it, and therefore we went into San Diego as not the favourites – the Australians did. So it really took off the heat off us and just let us get on with the job really."
Brad Butterworth
"There's a lot of teams that talk themselves up and there's a few teams that talk about the sport. I think we had a very good philosophy of talking about other people in the team and talking about the team as a whole, and talking about how good the other teams we were coming up against were, which they were all very good. That was a better philosophy I think and held us in great stead all the way to the end."
Russell Coutts
"We'd been bitten pretty hard in some of the previous campaigns by thinking things were going better than what they actually were, so I think everyone was pleased with the progress but probably apprehensive about what everyone else was doing."
Tom Schnackenberg
"I remember John Bertrand for example, he felt pretty confident because his designer was telling him 'we're going to finish between you, which is oneAustralia and Syd Fischer's boat' which were almost sister ships, and he was being told if the wind blew15 knots Syd would win and if it blew less than 15 knots they would win. And then he went out and raced against us and we beat them by quite a long way and he just announced that we had a breakthrough. That's what he told the world. So that's what we were hearing and it was nice to hear that."
Simon Daubney
"We always knew this boat was faster but then we thought we don't need to use this boat yet so we'll keep it in the hip pocket. So we used 38 in the second round robin and the third round robin I think. And then when we switched 38 out for the semi-finals and used this boat (NZL-32) for the final, everyone's going 'that's it, this is where the wheels are falling off. What are they doing, they're going crazy and using their old boat.' It was the dog barking boat, you know.
PART 4 - SAILING
Team New Zealand lined up alongside six other challengers for the Louis Vuitton Cup began in mid-January with the regatta compromising four round robins followed by semi-finals and final.
The Kiwis went through the round robin unbeaten on the water, dropping only one race in the protest room.
They easily qualified top for the semi-finals, then faced oneAustralia in the final.
Despite using their back-up boat after AUS-35 spectacularly sank, the Australians handed Team New Zealand their only loss of the entire regatta.
But they couldn't stop the Kiwi crew from sailing on.
Craig Monk
"Pretty much sailed every day. I can remember the days being really long. I remember finishing races and having the back-up boat waiting for us, and we'd turn around and go back out testing after winning races by three, four, five minutes. We didn't leave any stone unturned and just kept pushing and pushing and pushing."
Tom Schnackenberg
"As soon as we'd beaten all the other challengers in the first round with 38 – and we knew 32 was a little faster – we thought if we just keep on marching we'll be hard to beat."
Craig Monk
"Knowing that we had 32 sitting on the dock and we had the young guys tickling her up, making sure it was just perfect. And we'd go out and win a race, then walk by 32 and just give her a bit of a tap and say 'you'll get your day' you know."
Brad Butterworth
"There was a lot of dock talk about that the boat didn't measure and that we couldn't use it, it wasn't strong enough or wasn't fast enough. You know misery needs a friend, so everyone was happy to hear that. So when it came out, people were a little bit surprised and didn't really know. They certainly realised when we sheeted on in the first race of the Louis Vuitton final, they knew that we had a better boat."
Bob Fisher
"They made the best use of what they'd got and perhaps upped it a notch in every respect, and that was what did it. That was what did it, there wasn't anything else. They got the perfect performance out of what they got. Dennis had got a duff boat so they were one ahead of him on that. You can't hold it back, that was the difference."
Craig Monk
"We knew we were going well but we didn't want to accept it until we had the trophy in hand and that's where Peter Blake was very, very good at keeping us grounded. He'd often sit us down like school children, I remember sitting on the floor and he'd stand up and look down through his nose at us and just tell us 'there's going to be distractions, there's going to be weirdness. This is the America's Cup. One race at a time, just keep going, keep going until we get to the end.'"
Simon Daubney
"We might have allowed ourselves a little bit of, you know, couple of jokes or a couple of words here or there when we were a couple of hundred metres from the finish line in race 5. But until then anything could happen and you're kind of not believing it or thinking it's possible. We stayed pretty serious right to the end."
Warwick Fleury
"I don't know if it was a team thing. It was certainly me personally. Any thought like that was instantly discarded. We didn't allow ourselves to think that way, it was always just let's take that one step. And I think if somebody had mentioned that in any sort of meeting or even socially he would've been told to shut up."
Russell Coutts
"Yeah it was pretty evident from the first moments of the first race that we had a big advantage, bigger than we thought actually. We went into a mode of being pretty conservative actually, because the odds were heavily stacked in our favour. And unless we did something really stupid like sank the boat or something. Don't forget there had been a boat sinking just prior to that."
Craig Monk
"I remember one instance where, I think it was 4-0 and we were walking out of the dressing sheds and they were starting to set up for the celebration party. And Peter Blake made them close it all down, shut it all up and take it all away. Even though it was still 4-0 and looking imminent we were going to win. And that really hit home that the job's not done until we win that last race. Nothing's set in stone."
PART 5 - RED SOCKS
Nothing summed up the country's following of Team New Zealand's progress through the regatta like the red socks campaign.
Donned by Peter Blake for every race, his lucky socks hit the headlines when NZL-32 suffered its first defeat – with Blake and the socks absent that day.
Soon New Zealanders young and old were clamouring for a pair of their own, not only as a show of support but a late money raiser for the team.
Pippa Blake
"The red sock, you can probably see me rolling my eyes a bit, and I have recounted the tale many times. But it was Christmas, and one of his Christmas presents from me – I wouldn't have just given him socks – was a pair of actually posh red socks. They were Ralph Lauren and they'd been bought in Neiman Marcus in San Diego. So they were part of his Christmas present and unbeknownst to me he wore them for the first race. At that time the weather was a bit cooler so the guys were all wearing long trousers. And yes he wore them for the first race, they won that race so he wore the next day and I think two or three days on perhaps better get another pair of red socks. He started to call them his lucky red socks. But that was very much a family thing. In a previous Whitbread race I'd given him a pair of brightly coloured ski socks and they were his lucky socks.
Then of course the weather became a bit warmer and the guys started wearing shorts so the socks became a bit more obvious but I don't think anyone really picked up that Peter was wearing red socks, maybe one or two, until I think a French journalist had clocked that he was wearing his red socks. And about 20 or 30 races down the track Peter's elbows were getting quite sore. He had tendonitis so he thought he'd have a day off the boat.
Tony Rae – trimmer
"And when I stepped on board to take his place on the traveller, jokingly one of us either he said it to me or I said it to him 'hey, better wear the red socks, better take the socks' and it just turned into this massive campaign and following that you just had to have the lucky red socks on."
Pippa Blake
"I remember feeling quite anxious that he was there and not on the boat, and for some extraordinary reason that very day they lost the race. And so overnight word got through to New Zealand 'get Blakie back on the boat with his red socks' and sure enough the next day he went on the boat, he had his red socks and they carried on winning until the end. It was just one of those extraordinary I suppose coincidences or things that happened."
Tony Rae
"Luckily they turned out to work and it just turned into this fantastic following back here in New Zealand."
Russell Coutts
"I think it gave people an emotional connection to the team, they were able to participate in a really simple way. You look back on that, it was a cool marketing idea, you know."
Peter Montgomery
"I know people have worn them again but it's nothing like what happened for that oncer in 1995. It was a oncer and it was amazing to see it and to be part of it."
Pippa Blake
"People still leave red socks every few months on Peter's headstone in the local graveyard where he's buried, so the fact people are still doing that 20 years on is quite something."
PART 6 - THE LINE
A veteran of the Cup since 1980, Peter Montgomery has been the voice of the America's Cup for Kiwis since the first challenge in Fremantle in 1986/87.
His commentary as Black Magic crossed the line to seal victory is one of the most iconic in New Zealand sports broadcasting.
Peter Montgomery
"The morning of Race 5, I got up quite early and I thought to myself this is going to be a big day for New Zealand, and significant for the future. So I scribbled down notes that I thought were key points, trying to summarise the campaigns going right back Race 1 in KZ-7, 1986 - how it seemed impossible for New Zealand to even challenge for the America's Cup. In 1980 they didn't have the money, they didn't have the technology, and to give a summary of all the campaigns since then – '88, '92 – and then what happened in '95. I wrote a couple of headlines down and then once they got round the top mark last time and heading to the finish I thought to myself I'd better start thinking about this now, this is going to happen. And I had a couple of notes but you can't write anything out word for word quite obviously because you're out on the water and you're bobbing around. My biggest problem was actually trying to work out what I can going to say when we were in a boat on an angle from the line, and I was trying to time it all to be able to say the right words to summarise what was about to happen and get it in sync with the boat going over the line. I was as much concerned about trying to give a summary that I thought might stand up and would last, because it was going to be such a significant day for New Zealand sport, and also get it timed at the same time. And it was just towards the end I thought ok, I'd been tossing around a few ideas. That's when I thought I'll go with 'the America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup' and I was trying to give the pace and the delivery, and the light and shade that it needed to be delivered."
In the last 20 years the America's Cup has been dominated by Dennis Conner, who set the standard. Now New Zealand's great rival is about to become the first man to lose the Cup twice, this time beaten by Team New Zealand, who have taken this game to a new level and so reach remarkable standards. 12 years ago the call went out to stand up Australia, now in 1995 it's stand up New Zealand. Black Magic is about to sail to an unprecedented 5-nil win and convincing victory. The America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup, and for only the second time in 144 years the most illustrious and elusive of prizes in sailing, international sport's oldest prize leaves the United States this time to a different down under – New Zealand. Now, joy and delight for Peter Blake, Russell Coutts and the team, because finally New Zealand really has something to shout about.
PART 7 - 5-0
Team New Zealand didn't have to wait long to celebrate, sweeping aside Conner and lifting the Cup for the first time.
The win in the fifth and final race sparked celebrations throughout New Zealand and long into the night in San Diego.
The America's Cup was now New Zealand's Cup.
Russell Coutts
"You'd worked together with those guys for years and years. Not just that campaign, but some of them for a long time before that. And to finally pull it off was a big moment."
Tom Schnackenberg
"I remember waving my arms in the air, because that was the end, and we'd won."
Jeremy Scantlebury
"That's when all the emotion came out because you'd finally realised that you'd done it. We were just absolutely stoked."
Bob Fisher
"Obviously one of the most dominant performances, it's better than the performance of Australia 2 in their run up. But that really was a performance. And boy did we cheer, even us Poms. We cheered to see you guys take it, it was wonderful. I can't tell you, it was almost a sigh of relief from us to see it come out of there."
Warwick Fleury
"It was obviously elation but there was also an element of just relief. You know, we've done it. We've got this through, the boat hasn't broken in half or all these other things that can go wrong, we've done it. But it was certainly one of the special days."
Craig Monk
"You never know what that feeling is going to be like, but having a little bit of success in yachting you still can't match that feeling of sixty people all working towards a goal like that and actually succeeding in the way we did was something that I'll never forget, for sure."
Brad Butterworth
"I think any Kiwi kid that grew up in the sailing fraternity it would be a dream come true, so for me it was dream that when I was sailing P Class here or youth boats or whatever around Auckland harbour, it was a dream to win the America's Cup. And I never ever thought it would be for New Zealand."
Tom Schnackenberg
"I remember getting on the phone and calling my Mum in New Zealand. It was Mother's Day. Someone else said 'I can see Tom, he's talking on the phone' and my mother said 'yes, he's talking to me.' So that was a real time video conference almost."
Jeremy Scantlebury
"It was massive and it put New Zealand yachting on the map. I think the next week we were on the front page of the Time magazine and stuff like that, so it was massive, and that was the beginning of where New Zealand is regarded as a yachting nation nowadays."
Tony Rae
"it was pretty exciting knowing everything was back at the dock being prepared for a fairly major sort of party. And that was pretty cool coming into the dock and next minute there's trees up, there's astroturf down, there's a stage, a band set up. It was all go, pretty cool time.
Craig Monk
"Pretty disappointing the America's Cup back then, although we made some changes since it did get bashed. Trying to put five litre bottles of Moet into like a fifty millilitre cap at the top just wasn't happening, so in the end we worked it out and just went straight out of the bottle I think. I don't think the Americans could believe what they were seeing, these Kiwis just grabbing the Cup, passing it around. And not just the sailors, around the whole team and anyone that were involved with our whole challenge got to hold the Cup, and we definitely wanted to spread the word and bring it back home for everyone to see.
Peter Montgomery
"I remember we went to the media conference and it had become apparent that some of the sailors had definitely had a few drinks. And there was one particular sailor who let a couple of expletives go but I didn't note it because I just thought we won't talk to him again and move on. I had people in my ears going 'PJ get him off the air! Get him off the air!'"
Simon Daubney
"The nights like a little bit of a blur but I do remember some stuff. I do remember the custodian of the Cup still following us around while we were just walking around the streets with it, just going 'they can't just walk down the street with that, what are they doing?' And this guy just following us around and we're going 'get over it, it's over. You don't have to look after the Cup anymore, we've got this.' It was fun. It was one of the great nights for sure. "
PART 8 - HOMECOMING
Team New Zealand returned as heroes and the nation came out to welcome them and the Cup home.
A crowd of more than 300,000 turned out in Auckland for a parade down Queen Street, and the scene was repeated throughout the country.
Russell Coutts
"Nobody had any idea. In fact, I'm not even sure people here had an idea of what it was like."
Tony Rae
"You can read as much as you like, all the faxes and school things that were coming through and stuff over there, but until you actually get back here, until we flew in and realised the whole place was just about turned red – flying over paddocks in the middle of the country with this massive red sock in the middle of a paddock, all of a sudden realised the extent that people were going through to follow this thing and get behind it."
Jeremy Scantlebury
"Teachers were letting kids off school for the day. And coming in and landing at the airport, that was huge with the fire truck shooting water over. I think we were just totally blown away by it, and quite shocked by it. We'd had some initial stuff, we'd been up to New York and stuff like that beforehand but the guys were just stunned really."
Pippa Blake
"Taking the America's Cup back to New Zealand and seeing half or maybe three quarters of the nation wearing red socks. Farmer dipping their whole herds of sheep, their feet in red dye, it was extraordinary, quite phenomenal."
Simon Daubney
"Russell and I had to go do a television…well, Russell had to do a television interview in London so I went to keep him company. And then we went to a (Rolling) Stones concert that night so we were partying there, and then we had to fly back to New York and then to Washington and then we came here. So everyone's kind of like, it had been a big week by the time we landed here, and we went to a reception down at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron in the car park there and it was just a throng and everyone was pretty excited and it was great to see everyone."
Brad Butterworth
"It was a little bit overwhelming in that respect, you go from, you know to the penthouse I guess. But it was amazing that New Zealand had taken it on the way they had."
Peter Montgomery
"The people were ten deep for block after block. And then in Wellington I remember going along Lampton Quay through that concrete canyon and the colours of all these faces, cosmopolitan New Zealand all smiling. Then I remember in Christchurch we'd just come down Columbo Street, down to the area by the park where the Town Hall area was, and there were these two distinguished, dignified looking women looking fresh off a North Canterbury farm in their tweed suit and pearl, running after these grotty yachties."
Tony Rae
"And to tour around the country with the team and to see what it did in the smaller towns was probably more amazing than what we'd known in Auckland where there's a lot of people. But the smaller towns was just incredible."
Craig Monk
"We could not believe what we were seeing because we were just doing, not a job but something we loved on a boat and not realising what effect we had on New Zealand at the time. We were just winning yacht races and that's what we were good at doing, but not realising we were bringing the nation together at the same time, and I think the parades really made it hit home for us what we had done."
source: newshub archive
