Assignment - The America's Cup

Television (Full Length Episode) – 2003

I was incredibly bitter...the night we won because I knew half the team were leaving.
– Tactician Brad Butterworth on the dramas swirling around Team NZ in 2000

You have a catastrophic blow like the loss of a huge number of very experienced and old campaigners from the team and you're scrambled, we had billionaires up and down syndicate row with money hanging out of their back pockets, flapping under the nose of every available sailor and designer. It was a really, really tough position to be in, and one that in hindsight we didn't recover from...
– Team NZ CEO Ross Blackman on the contributing reasons for Team NZ's failure at the 2003 America's Cup Regatta

When an American journalist, trying to convey the national mood, described to his audience how Coutts and co leaving Team New Zealand was received with the same grief as the break-up of the Beatles, he was seriously overstating it...
– Sports journalist Jan Corbett on the public perception of Russell Coutts in 2003, The NZ Herald, 22 February 2003

So was Team New Zealand obsessed with building a rocket ship? Did they somehow think that to beat the opposition, they needed to design a boat that would perform for an inexperienced crew?
– Presenter Kerryanne Evans

Being called a traitor — nobody likes that.
– Brad Butterworth on being called names

Five and a half weeks after our disastrous America's Cup defence, we ask 'why did team New Zealand fail'?
– Presenter Kerryanne Evans

There is bad luck and then there is bad management and I think we suffered from the latter.
– Team New Zealand Skipper Dean Barker

I think when he found what Peter [Blake]'s job was really about and how hard it was, that he just couldn't be bothered giving the time to it. And I think what he wanted to do was to sail and play golf, and good on him. But he should have said so . . . he came up with a lot of spurious reasons why he was leaving and they just weren't true. And he got paid a lot more money too, probably.
– Team NZ sponsor Douglas Myers offers his opinion on the reasons Russell Coutts left Team NZ after the 2000 America's Cup win