America's Cock

I've spent a pleasant long weekend in Auckland. Today I had lunch with the lady who used to facilitate the Wellington autism group. We only touched on the America's Cup in our chat. I've thought all along that the whole thing is a bit of a crock - she went one better by calling it a cock.

The telly in my motel room is missing (of all channels) TV1, so no America's Cock watching for me. I don't care enough to go down to Shed 10 to watch it, so I've been making do with the (very informative) radio commentary. As yet another crazy rule is invoked with each passing race, the series descends deeper into farce. Too much wind, not enough wind, the wrong type of wind. Then the time-limit rule. When the commentators got wind (!) of that rule, I assumed that whoever was ahead at the 40-minute mark (Emirates in this case) would be declared the winner. But no, the race was deemed to be null and void. Utterly ludicrous. What's more, nobody on either boat knew anything about the rule. This morning a whale was lurking close to the course - what a shame it didn't stop the race; that would have capped things off nicely.

So, with the score at 8-5, what will happen next? My guess is that  Emirates will be docked a couple of points for using an illegal jib-doobrie, and that'll make it 6-5. They'll then trade blows over the next few races to leave things tantalisingly poised at 8-8, at which time they'll dig out a rule requiring a two-point margin to win (this is used in other sports and would be way more sensible than many of the other rules we've recently found out about). Some time next month, with the score at 14-13, the total loss of productivity from people watching the races will have exceeded the potential benefits to the country of hosting the next series.

As for the all the money we NZ taxpayers have pumped into this campaign, don't get me started. Please just let it be over. Go Team ... er ... Emirates!