What's Your Favourite America's Cup Moment - Peter Montgomery - YouTube

Hold your proper course said Paul Cayard as his voice echoed around the Hauraki Gulf.

[Paul Cayard] He's below the proper course.

Hold your proper course

Hold your proper course

Greetings, I'm Peter Montgomery,

and I've been privileged to be at every America's Cup since 1980,

but the one memory that stands out, was the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup in Auckland 2000.

Featuring America One, skippered by Paul Cayard

and Luna Rossa Prada, skippered by Francesco de Angelis.

[commentator] You can hear the intimidation the umpires are coming under.

one minute the talk was of them being above it.

Now you can hear Cayard as he tries to bully the umpires.

It came to the downhill slide towards the finish,

as Prada had come from behind to take the lead,

and then it was attack after attack, wave after wave, as America One kept coming at them.

[Paul Cayard] He's below my proper course.

****, he's below my proper course.

In America's Cup 2000, there was a major advance in audio technology,

and so we were able to take viewers right into the scrum of both boats,

and they could feel the electricity, the energy, this was the real deal of the sailors trying to get

one-up over each other, and we were ring side to it all.

[Paul Cayard] He's below his proper course.

Paul Cayard and his afterguard weren't only yelling across the water to the Italians

to hold their proper course, perhaps they were also trying to influence the umpires as well.

So the umpires were thinking, whoa, is Luna Rossa really holding their proper course.

[Paul Cayard] We are overlapped and he is bearing down.

[Paul Cayard] Don't bear off.

Don't bear off.

Don't bear off.

He's bearing off.

[commentator] He's not bearing off, he's sailing a dead straight course, the whole time.

Yellow penalty

He's got the penalty.

They've thrown the penalty, they have, and I think they have been talked into it.

Within the shadow of the finish, after 17 "hold your proper course",

it came down to not only mind games, but the physical game, and if they were just a fraction off,

that could open the opportunity and a window for the trailing boat to pass,

and that's what we saw happen.

Look at the headsails, who gained a fill, and who's going to get the momentum quickly,

and we can see down to leeward, that Luna Rossa stalled a little bit,

and it is America One getting up pace, and slowly inching over,

and so they were able to slowly get their bow out and that was enough to do it.

[commentator] Inch by inch, winch by winch,

this enthralling tactical battle that involved everything that is brilliant about the sport of yachting,

and about the sport of America's Cup.

This has been absoluelty fantastic.

The tactical nuances and subtleties.

The intimidation and bullying of the afterguards on the umpires.

Coming down to the line in an absolute thriller, America One is going to get a vital victory.

America One gets there and beats Prada,

by less than a boat length.

Luna Rossa, they learned a lot from that, and they were able to take some of those lessons,

and also sail very well to challenge for the America's Cup in America's Cup 2000,

and that was the first time, that a yacht from the United States was neither a defender or a challenger.