The Kiwis have won yachting’s world cup, with skipper and owner Neville Crichton proving that ‘Alfa Romeo’ is the fastest super maxi in world with a dominant performance in the week long Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup with Aussie rival, Wild Oats forced into third place behind German super maxi, Morning Glory.

The result in the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Sardinia at the weekend (9 September 2006) reverses the positions in the 2005 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Race, where Wild Oats beat Alfa Romeo into second place and continues the battle between Crichton and Wild Oats skipper Bob Oatley for the title of fastest super maxi in the world.

The week-long match between the two competing 98-foot Super Maxis ended with Alfa Romeo claiming the title and Wild Oats finishing third, on equal points with Morning Glory, who finished second thanks to a series of consistent results. While Alfa Romeo sailed into the last race with the certainty of having won the championship (an unassailable 4-point lead over Wild Oats and a 6-point lead over Morning Glory), Wild Oats still had to fight to secure the second spot on the podium. 

In the end it all came down to the final run of the final race. Bob Oatley's Wild Oats (Australia) had a brilliant start at the pin end of the line, while Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo (New Zealand) chose the Committee Boat, and Morning Glory stuck to the centre. Wild Oats was able to seize an early lead, rounding the top mark approximately 3 boat-lengths ahead of Alfa Romeo. At the first leeward mark, Alfa's crew hit problems with the take down, while Wild Oats then struggled with their spinnaker hoist at the second windward mark. Further down the final run, the Aussie crew sailed to the less favoured right hand corner of the course where they executed a less than perfect gybe.

It was as if the pressure of the aggressive match-racing duel between the two Super Maxis and the added stress of knowing that today's conditions suited perfectly Morning Glory, were conspiring to undermine the confidence on usually exemplary Wild Oats. Although Wild Oats led around the course throughout today's race, claiming line honours, it wasn't enough to stop Morning Glory from claiming the top spot on handicap.

Neville Crichton, who was unaware of the problems on Oats, summed up the last race of the series, describing what went wrong on Alfa: “We had a halyard jam at the bottom mark and that unsettled us quite a badly. We couldn't get the kite down and that was the difference between winning and losing probably. We got a second on handicap and we're quite happy about that. We had already won the series, but it would have been nice to get another line honours win and that's what we were going for today. The bottom mark killed it. Wild Oats pulled out, we reeled her in. She went around the second top mark a minute and two seconds ahead of us and in the end she finished thirty-eight seconds ahead, so we pulled quite a bit out; we ran out of time to get her back."