Americas Cup Race 13. As brought to you by Martin Tasker

The Americas Cup is still the Americas Cup.  At one stage people were predicting it would be on its way to Auckland as early as last Monday.  But that was before Team USA did some work on the boat, the Team New Zealand one almost flipped, too much wind, some flag bombing and, today, not enough wind.

It is all part of the drama; the range of twists and turns here has kept the interest.  This is vastly superior to previous whitewashes.

But there’s an intriguing side-show going on here.  One person is not enjoying this one bit, and he is feeling somehow betrayed by this sequence of events.  And that person is voice of the TV coverage; Martin Tasker.

Today’s events took his coverage from gloomy to ranty.  The tipping point was the cancellation of Race 13, or UNLUCKY 13 as he called it due to the race running overtime.  A rule that has been in place for decades.

Strangely it seemed as if Tasker did know about this rule, its relevance or its history.  Which cheats the viewer really.  These people are there to help us with things like rules.

Anyway, that wasn’t where Tasker wanted to go today.  This was a Traversty

Obviously, it started with the cancellation, but it was the commentary of the rematch, after Team New Zealand made a couple of mistakes that cost it the contest, that reached new levels in bitterness.

“The thought of Jimmy Spithill’s smirk after the race was called off”

What was he meant to do?

“The boats groaning just like all the Kiwi supporters will be after this.”

“If the wind gods had any sense of decency it would give NZ a huge blast. That’s not the way it works here I’m afraid”

What is exactly the accusation here; Oracle owns the weather too?

“The very very very rich getting richer. As we said before”

Nothing like a bit of wealth envy.

“That whole system’s been a joke”

“Cruel cruel day”

And on and on; all delivered in a tone normally reserved for coverage of a state funeral.

And to finish.   “All we can do is wish them well. And somehow, and in some way, look forward to tomorrow”   That seems a strange way of encouraging people to tune in tomorrow.