Nowhere in the labyrinth of legal minutiae that is the America’s Cup rules book is there a section on boats enlisting help from above, which is just as well as South Africa’s Team Shosholoza claim to have a hotline to heaven.
The service provider to the link to the Almighty is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has taken to his role as Shosholoza’s patron with infectious enthusiasm.
After match race wins against France’s Areva Challenge and United Team Germany in an America’s Cup preliminary regatta last year, the team received the following email, signed simply ”Arch”:
”Yippee and Yippee again. Is this our second victory? WOW and double WOW. Much love and blessings, Arch. Patron of Shosholoza.”
After another match win against the China team’s Son of Dragon, Shosholoza faced a crucial race against Italy’s Mascalzone Latino, and wrote to their patron asking for his help.
Within three hours the team had a reply: ”I’ll say a special prayer for you all on Wednesday. I’m in the United States staying at a monastery so I certainly will have a hotline! Good luck and God bless you all, Arch.”
In the end Shosholoza lost out by a mere four seconds to the Italians, having had to execute a 270 degree penalty turn prompting the following ecclesiastical e-mail: ”I’m still using the hotline; that’s why we lost by only very small margins for a relatively inexperienced crew! Well done. Arch. Patron Shosholoza.”
The team’s founder, captain Salvatore Sarno, commenting on his boat’s association with Tutu, said: ”I am a believer and for me the Archbishop is someone very close to God.
”I am convinced that Team Shosholoza has the protection of God and this is why we have asked him to help us through our hurdles to the America’s Cup next year.”
As a back-up just in case anything goes wrong with Archbishop Tutu’s hotline, Sarno has also enlisted the services of a Spanish bishop who blessed the boat’s new mast at a ceremony at Valencia’s Port America’s Cup.
An Italian who has made South Africa his home for the past 20 years, Sarno has put together a predominately South African crew that has punched above its weight for Cup first-timers to put itself in with a very real chance of scraping through to the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Cup.
The team draws its name Shosholoza from a haunting miners’ song that has a special place deep in the roots of African culture and which loosely translated means ”moving forward”.
And that is precisely what it’s done since its launch back in 2003 leaving Brad Butterworth, America’s Cup defender Alinghi’s skipper, for one impressed.
”On a good day this team can beat anyone,” said the New Zealander.
For Sarno Team Shosholoza — which cuts a distinctive presence with its Zulu markings — represents the chance to bring South Africa to Europe.
”We have the opportunity to show the new face of South Africa, a democratic, modern country — more than 10 years after the end of apartheid — where people of all races and colour work together successfully.
”This young country is undergoing great changes and I want to show this to the whole of Europe.” — AFP
