Is it hard to believe it’s 30 years since your America’s Cup victory?

In some ways yes, in other cases no. Yes, in that 30 years is a long time. And no, in that people still come up to me in the street to tell me what they were doing when we crossed the line all those years ago. It’s quite amazing ...

The cultural significance of that victory was monumental in Australia. Bunkered down in Newport, did you have any concept of how big it was becoming back home?

Even if we dreamed, in our wildest dreams, how big that win could’ve been, it would’ve been maybe a quarter of the true size. No one in their right mind could’ve visualised the impact that it had. And nor did we want to. The consequences of winning or losing at that stage of the game were enormous; pondering the size of those consequences would’ve been counter-productive to us getting on with the job out there on the water. Of course, word was coming through – people were phoning through from Australia. But we tried to limit all contact. We stopped reading newspapers and we got rid of all the television sets in our crew compound. We just disappeared into our own bubble. Regardless of that, it was growing ever-clearer that the groundswell of support was becoming massive back home.

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