Harrison and Walker give their thoughts

"There’s only one winner – it’s not us this time but we’ll be back," says Peter Harrison

The massive effort of Peter Harrison and the team of GBR Challenge has come to an end - for this America's Cup at least.

So would Peter Harrison have done anything differently? "We had no option, we started in August 2000," says the man responsible for bring Britain back into the Cup. "The only thing I regret is that time is the enemy. We’d not been in it for 15 years so we were on a massive learning curve. I came here saying we were here to win the Americas Cup, and the second objective was to win one race, because we didn’t even know if we’d be able to do that.

"We’ve won eight and we’ve had two scores against Stars and Stripes, which is very encouraging. The only disappointment is that we did bring GBR 78, which is White Magic, and we were always going to be one programme. I would just like to have been here a bit earlier. So if there’s any lesson it’s to start early and to get your boats here early. But we’ll have a better opportunity next time."

Harrison has confirmed that Britain will be back for the next Louis Vuitton series. "I’m planning on continuity, definitely," he says. "I’ve taken lots of decisions within the team, which will enable that to happen. The key thing I wanted to do was kick start Britain back into what I call the World Cup of sailing. The key to continuity is hopefully we have shown, where we’ve got major global companies and British companies, that there is value in supporting and backing us for this World Cup of sailing. Given that, I am prepared to put certain additional monies and carry the campaign on. But I do need partners and sponsors to join me.

"Personally, I’ve enjoyed it immensely. I think the New Zealand people have been fantastic in welcoming us all. Everybody, and the spirit of the competition, has been great, so we’ve had a great time. It’s just disappointing that it’s come to an end. But it has to come to an end. There’s only one winner – it’s not us this time but we’ll be back."

GBR Challenge skipper Ian Walker congratulated Stars & Stripes. "They did a fantastic job over the five races we’ve had. They managed to get the right side of the start each time, and they’re some of the best sailors in the world and they never let us get back in the race. They said beforehand they knew we’d keep fighting and we did – we saw today we caught right back up downwind. But they sailed the shifts wonderfully and never gave us a chance.

"So well done to them and also well done to my crew. They never let the team down, I think our boat handling was exceptional. We always knew if we could keep it close then we’d be able to put a lot of pressure on the other teams. Whenever the races were close, the guys did a great job. As Peter says, with more time, work on the design stuff, all the things that we need to think about we can do better, then I ‘m sure we can put more pressure on the other teams and we look forward to doing a better job in the future. So well done Stars and Stripes."

So why did they lose? "We have been having some difficulties, as you can clearly see," admitted Ian Walker. "I took on the last couple of races. I think both Andy Beadsworth and Andy Green have done a fantastic job over the last year and a half – certainly in the Japanese boats it was really one of our strengths, at the CORM regatta it was something we were very very comfortable with. But obviously it became a bit of a problem.

"We tried different ways of solving that problem and I guess we’ll learn from that. I don’t think there’s anything we would gain by unveiling the boat to everybody else - it’s not something we’ve discussed right now but I imagine that can only help other teams. If it’s Peter’s intention to continue, as he says, and to challenge and to win the Americas Cup next time, then probably the worst thing we can do is to help anyone else."

Rather than jumping on the next flight home Peter Harrison has announced that the team will be remaining in Auckland at until the new year. "I’ve announced to the team, because of course we’ve not been able to bring GBR78 Wight Magic fully into our considerations, and there’s further work we can do on 70, we in fact will be carrying on here till at least 31st December. I want the continuity to start from here and so our team will be continuing to work as if we’re already starting on the next one. We really need to know what we’ve actually put together and whether there’s any real benefits of the particular 78 versus 70 so we will be carrying on while we continue here. All the infrastructure’s here and we want to continue sharing the excitement of it as well."

When asked about whether or not he felt that the designers had had too much say in the boat they sailed, Ian Walker denied it. "I don’t think so. The team made decisions about what sort of boat we would have and how we would sail it. We’ve learnt many things in this event and one of the things is if you get your boat quite late then it’s hard to learn about it, you always want to work on getting the boat faster in a straight line. We had quite a lot of technical difficulties in the months building up to this event, with a number of components of the boat and rig, and it all takes time out of the programme, and it all takes time out of key areas such as practising your starts.

"If you’re a small team like ours you don’t have as much time to do everything. You’ve got to choose what’s important. If there was a mistake it wasn’t so much in the designers or the boat, it was in not finding that problem soon enough to be able to deal with it. We found plenty of others and dealt with those and I’m sure we’ve got other problems still to discover. I think it’s prioritising time, prioritising resources, working out what’s important and I think we’ve done a lot of that very well. This is a tough event, I think the standard’s moved on a long way, from what I can see, from the last Cup. As someone said to me today, next time round we’ll have an advantage, we’ve got a couple of months’ head start on everybody this time."

When asked if GBR Challenge could have gone further this time round. "It’s always quite hard, so soon after the race when you’re knocked out and you feel emotional and pretty empty, to be rational about things. I don’t think this is as far as we could have got. It was very close, we did beat Stars and Stripes in the round robins, we were tied with Sweden. One little thing here or there might have made the difference and we might have been able to choose our opponent, we then may or may not have been able to beat France, so you never quite know. I believe our team was strong enough to at least get to the next stage.