New Zealand faces make-or-break defence bid

A BATTERED Team New Zealand faces a make-or-break challenge today when it confronts Switzerland's Alinghi for the third race in defence of America's Cup, trailing 2-0 in the best-of-nine series.

After being forced by equipment failures to abandon the first race on Saturday after barely 25 minutes and being out-manoeuvred in the final miles after leading most of Sunday's contest, Team New Zealand got a badly needed day of rest yesterday.

Skipper Dean Barker and Team New Zealand syndicate chief Tom Schnackenberg decided not to sail at all on Monday, feeling a break for the crew was more important than practicing their skills or testing newly repaired gear.

A visibly dispirited Barker insisted following Sunday's narrow loss to Alinghi that his team could still come back and win sport's oldest trophy for a third consecutive time.

"We know we're competitive, that's certainly a huge load off our minds ... now it's up to us to make sure we don't make the same mistakes."

It may very well be Barker's last chance to make good on today as no team in the 152-year history of the America's Cup has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win.

New Zealand's defence of the trophy was clearly in peril amid growing doubts both about their boat's radical new design features and Barker's tactical skills against the Alinghi skipper and his former mentor Russell Coutts.

On Saturday, strong winds and high seas nearly sank Team New Zealand's race boat, NZL-82, when tonnes of water inexplicably washed onto its decks and put such strain on the rigging that the carbon-fibre boom snapped and its headsail ripped free.

On Sunday, when winds were moderate and seas calm, no such technical problems plagued them Team New Zealand and after falling slightly behind Coutts on the first leg of the six-leg race, Barker surged ahead on the second, downwind leg and maintained a commanding lead of up to 200 metres around most of the 18.5 nautical mile course.

But Coutts, who won nine straight America's Cup races at the helm of Team New Zealand and has now added a record two more since defecting to the Swiss, outsmarted his one-time protege on the last turn.

Trailing by 26 seconds a gap that should have been insurmountable given the strong sailing of Baker up to that point Coutts was able to gybe inside the New Zealand boat, taking the wind from the defenders and powering over the finish line a boat-length ahead.

Weather Forecasts called for moderate to strong winds of 12-17 knots for today's race conditions earlier believed to favour Team New Zealand's "hula" design, although the first two days of racing have left that assumption in tatters.