However you slice it, NZL 82 suffered not one but three problems which knocked her out of Race 1, even before it was 14 minutes old.

The resonances of this, the 31st America's Cup match, to 1983 are uncanny. Then, one radically-featured yacht, Australia 11, with her upside down-winged keel, lined- up against a more conventional rival in the shape of Dennis Conner's Liberty. Now we have the hula equipped NZL 82 facing the sophisticated but conventional SUI 64.

Australia 11's sail designer was Tom Schnackenberg, starting out on what was to become an illustrious and highly influential America's Cup career with Australia 1V (1987), the Big Boat (1988), Spirit of Australia (1992) and Team New Zealand (1995, 2000 and 2003).

Of all people, he would know the lessons of history to be learned as to how a predicted faster boat (ask any Kiwi outside of Alinghi) can make the job of winning needlessly harder.

Let's replay the 1983 Cup. In Race 1, Australia 11 conceded the lead on the second reaching leg of the old Olympic triangle-style course when a block in the steering system failed. John Bertrand limped around the course steering with the trim tab and Conner's Liberty won by 1m 10s.

In Race 2, Liberty won again, by 1m 35s, as Australia 11's headboard car failed six minutes before the start and the mainsail dropped. In those days of deck scraping booms, the mainsail could only be trimmed by cranking the mast forward. Unbelievably, wounded wing or not, Australia 11 led at the first mark but could not prevail. Main trimmer Colin Beashel spent the downwind run up the mast jury rigging a repair. His nephew, another scion of the famous Australian boatbuilding family from Pittwater near Sydney, Adam, is now part of the TNZ afterguard.

Australia 11 posted her first win in Race 3, by 3m 14s, when her speed finally told and breakages did not trip up her progress. Race 4 was the one that Cup aficionados still talk about. It was Conner's epitaph race, the finest he, Tom Whidden and John Marshall ever sailed in the America's Cup, outwitting a faster boat by sheer tactical nose by 0m 43s.

Are Coutts, Butterworth, Jones and Schumann capable of similar deeds? You bet. They are probably the best tactical unit the modern Cup has ever seen.

Liberty's glory was short lived. Race 4 was her turn for gear failure. The hydraulic port jumper strut failed in the tune-up. The tender Rhonda roared back in the Newport where Robin Fuger had a spare at the shore base. Tom Rich and Scot Vogel did the rag-doll impression, tossed around up Liberty's mast by a rolling Atlantic swell. They replaced the strut only to have it fail four minutes before the start.

Fortune almost rescued the Conner cause and Bertrand, under no pressure from a wounded opponent, mis-timed the start by 1sec. In re-crossing, Australia 11 handed Liberty a 37s advantage. The Australians' speed rescued them to record a 1m 47s win.

That left the Cup at 3:3. Plainly, the faster boat was making hard work of it. And as we know, Australia 11 took the climactic Race 7, and the Cup, but only by coming from behind on the penultimate leg.

History was made at 5.20pm on Monday 26th September. Yet it so nearly didn't happen because Ben Lexcen's obsessive quest for lightness robbed Australia 11 of two wins. Bertrand's nerves didn't help the cause either.

So when Schnackenberg said TNZ were 'reviewing the assumptions' they'd made in their engineering after the Race 1 debacle you can be sure the scrutiny will be microscopic.

And on Friday, when Schnackenberg was asked about the parallels between this Cup and the 1983 one he said these prescient words:

"Plenty of things happened along the way that had nothing to do with the speed of the yachts and that happens in yacht racing. In some respects you could see the same thing happening here."

Tim Jeffery, 15 February 2003