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NZ Herald
16-05-2025
- Sport
- NZ Herald
Peter Burling on Team New Zealand exit, America's Cup success and what comes next
'Bouncing straight back out of that into another win was something pretty cool, looking back,' he recalls. 'I'm not sure whether it was superstition or not, but it was actually the first time I'd lifted the thing when I picked it up on stage. 'In our world, some people have a superstition that you don't want to pick it up until you've won it, and some people have a 'just you get a photo with it at any opportunity' kind of vibe. 'It was a little heavier than I thought. It was pretty cool. It's just such an iconic sporting trophy.' It was the first of three straight campaigns that ended with Burling hoisting the Auld Mug aloft. But after a decorated decade at the helm, the 34-year-old's tenure with Team New Zealand came to an end last month as the team opted to move on after drawn-out negotiations. 'It's been an amazing journey over the last 10 years. Some incredible memories with some incredible people, and a lot of success within that time,' Burling says. Discover more From the sailor's perspective, the negotiation was similar to what it had been over the past three cycles, with his desire to run concurrent campaigns in different competitions. He had been able to balance commitments with the Olympics and his roles as driver and co-chief executive of the Black Foils in SailGP in recent editions of the Cup, and believes being able to have that additional sailing time in other competitions was ultimately to the benefit of the team as well. However, that proved to be the deciding factor in negotiations. 'Team New Zealand saw it a little bit differently, where they kind of wanted a bit more control than they have in the past, and especially with my specific role within that,' Burling explains. 'It was just, I suppose, a subtle difference in terms of the amount of uncertainty between how the two were going to operate compared to what they've given me in the past. 'I think when you look at the Black Foils and SailGP and how exciting that proposition is, I really wanted to continue my position within that team. For me to be able to compete for New Zealand on the home stage, as well as the international stage, is really motivating and exciting. 'To see the first Auckland event have 25,000 people getting through the race stadium, you know, hundreds of thousands of people watching that event live, and for people to actually get super excited about a consistent sailing property right at the highest level in New Zealand annually is something that really motivated me there. 'I really wanted to keep my position within the SailGP team, and the way Team New Zealand saw it, they didn't see that probably quite the same as I did.' Negotiations between the two had been ongoing since they won the 37th edition in Barcelona late last year, which Burling had said was not unusual. It wasn't until February 2022 – almost a year after Team New Zealand defended the Cup in Auckland – that Burling and longtime teammate Blair Tuke confirmed they would return for the 2024 defence. However, in announcing Burling would not be with the team for the next cycle, Team New Zealand chief executive Grant Dalton said time was a luxury they did not have and the team had to move on in preparation for the next edition, to be held in Naples, Italy, in 2027, and the tighter cycle required 'a dedicated and new approach for continued success.' While Auckland was among the contenders to host the next edition, Burling says it's hard to know how a home regatta might have affected negotiations, if at all, and admits with the current economic model of how the Cup's structured, he didn't hold out much hope of it being in New Zealand this time. He did, however, think there would be a few more rounds of discussion between himself and Team New Zealand, but knew the offer that stood wasn't something that worked for him. 'I get along really well with Dalts. Obviously, it's been a really successful relationship for the last 10 years, so we have pretty good, open, frank conversations,' Burling says. 'For me, when you looked at previous campaigns, there's a lot of back and forth as to actually how to set the thing up for success in the first instance. 'They decided they weren't going to shift their position, so that was pretty much where things ended. But it's a part of life, it's part of sport, and you've got to be happy with the decisions you make.' There were no discussions about the possibility of him staying on in a different role. 'Our conversations were very much around [that] they wanted me to be in that key role, the one I've done for the last three cycles. It was probably a little bit of surprise that they didn't want to explore other options, but that's for them to decide, and, for me personally, I'm not really sure how those conversations would have unfolded, but we didn't go down that route.' It closes the book – for now – on Burling's time as an America's Cup sailor. He exits with a slew of accolades, including becoming the youngest helmsman to win the Auld Mug when, aged 26, he steered the team to victory in Bermuda, won three America's Cups in a row and set a new record for most America's Cup match race wins by a helmsman with 22. Advertise with NZME. He says the special thing, since it was confirmed he would not be with the team for the next cycle, has been that it has given him the chance to reflect on what he and the team had achieved. Burling succeeded Dean Barker as helmsman after the unsuccessful 2013 Cup challenge against Oracle Team USA in San Francisco, after racing for the Kiwi syndicate in, and winning, the Youth America's Cup in the same year. Burling and fellow Youth America's Cup sailor Tuke had watched the rollercoaster finish – with Team New Zealand conceding an 8-1 lead to lose 9-8 – from Marseille in France as they competed at, and won, the men's 49er world championships. Burling says that relatively quickly after that America's Cup he got a call asking if he wanted to be involved in the following cycle. Both he and Tuke were confirmed as members of Team New Zealand's next challenge in January 2014. 'I got a baptism of fire,' he recalls of his debut campaign. The 2017 cycle brought plenty of changes, including a new class of boat in which the number of crew on board dropped from 11 to six, and rules prohibiting challengers from building more than one new boat, while Team New Zealand didn't confirm they would be financed enough to commit to a challenge until six months after Burling had signed on. When the team got to Bermuda, they were fighting to keep their boat in decent shape and had to work their way back from a capsize during the semifinal of the Challenger Series. They were able to push through, however, this time getting the better of the American defenders. 'It's definitely a campaign, when you look back ... [in which] a lot of 50/50s, a lot of those close calls we always have in sport, seemed to just continue to roll our way,' he says. 'After we flipped, having a little more time to repair the wing, having a slightly easier opponent at that stage so you kind of didn't need to be back at 100% straight away, the continued fight to keep our foils in one piece, there was a lot of management of the boat to make sure we still had a boat to sail by the end of it, and then just the progression we were on at that stage ... it was really cool looking back at it.' It was the first in an America's Cup hat-trick for Burling and Team New Zealand, also winning regattas in Auckland in 2021 and again in Barcelona last year, which were contested on the radical 75-foot (23m) foiling monohull AC75s the team introduced after winning in 2013. And just as things progressed on the water, so too did his affairs on land. Burling is now a married man, and he and wife Lucinda are parents to 1-year-old Paloma. Together with Tuke as co-chief executive, he helped launch the New Zealand SailGP Team – later renamed the Black Foils – while the pair also founded Live Ocean, through which they support marine conservation projects and engage partners to help drive action and awareness to protect the seas. 'My motivation's incredibly high. I still absolutely love the sport. Obviously, life's a little bit busier than it was when you first started out, but I've always really enjoyed being busy and doing a lot of things at once. I feel like that's a lot of the reason why I've had so much success within my career; really being able to take the learnings from different facets of the sport or facets of life and bring them back in and apply them in a really positive way,' he says. 'It's been incredible, the last part, to grow a family. Lucy and our daughter have been absolutely amazing along this journey. It's been so cool to have that part of my life now, which obviously means that your time's even more important to you to be able to really enjoy that part of your life, which is really cool and something that we weigh into considerations.' While he is no longer a part of Team New Zealand, opportunity will still likely knock for Burling in the America's Cup arena in some capacity. He says his phone started ringing as soon as the news broke, with potential challengers testing the waters. Whether or not Burling will be able to sail for another team remains to be seen, with the confirmed protocol – the blueprint for the next edition - set to be released before the end of next month. Advertise with NZME. 'I definitely went into this with that goal of trying to be part of Team New Zealand and a structure that really worked for me into the next cycle, but the sailing community is incredibly small, so everyone knows everyone incredibly well and everyone's kind of feeling it out. 'Never say never. It'll definitely be interesting to see when the protocol comes out and the rules and the venue, just how everything can tie together, but, yeah, [I'm] definitely open to opportunities.' Dalton has previously noted that a draft version of the protocol allowed for two non-nationals to be recruited, and indications of that rule became stronger when Team New Zealand this week confirmed British sailor Chris Draper among their core sailors. However, it is understood that non-nationals recruited cannot fill on-water racing roles unless they were not involved in the last edition. In that situation, Burling will still be able to join another team in a non-racing role, but everything about his potential future in the Cup remains hypothetical until the protocol has been locked in. For the immediate future, Burling is focusing on drawing attention to the proposed Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill - which plans to introduce 19 new marine protection areas in the gulf to help address environmental decline because of human activities, but has stalled after two readings – through Foil4TheGulf, a mass foiling event on May 24 at the Royal Akarana Yacht Club co-hosted by the Black Foils and Live Ocean. 'We would love to see that get through Parliament. It's something that the Hauraki Gulf's really one of those amazing parts of New Zealand's landscape, traditionally,' he says. Advertise with NZME. 'It's one of the largest marine parks in the world, but it really is at a tipping point where we need to start getting runs on the board, start getting wins. By no means is this bill the complete solution, but it's a great step forward and one we need to get behind and really support and then showcase some really positive change.' He will head abroad in June for the next SailGP event, with the global foiling league returning in New York on June 8-9 after cancelling their event in Rio de Janeiro scheduled for this month to address and issue with some of the wingsails in the fleet. Then he's off to Nice, France, for the United Nations Ocean Conference. And while he feels he and Team New Zealand could have come to a solution on another campaign, Burling accepts it wasn't to be and is looking forward to what life has in store for him next. 'I'm definitely still on really good terms with everyone there. I've obviously really enjoyed my time and the opportunities and the way I've grown as part of Team New Zealand. 'But I'm looking forward to continuing my journey; continuing to grow the Black Foils, continuing to put ocean health on the agenda on the New Zealand stage with Live Ocean and really drive some positive change there and also continue to try and grow myself as a person and spend more time with family. 'I'm just looking forward to the next period, what opportunities come up and where life ends up taking me.'
1News
14-05-2025
- Sport
- 1News
Team NZ name new skipper after Burling's departure
Team New Zealand has named Nathan Outteridge as its new skipper for its next America's Cup defence. Peter Burling, the helmsman and three-time winner of the America's Cup, parted ways with the team early last month after an agreement was unable to be reached. The team today announced its team of five core sailors: Outteridge, Andy Maloney, Blair Tuke, Sam Meech and Chris Draper. Outteridge, an Australian, was co-helmsman alongside Burling when they held on to the America's Cup in Barcelona last year. Tuke, Maloney and Meech were all also returning for another campaign, while British sailor Draper is a new addition who last competed in Japan's challenge in 2017. Meech was a back-up sailor in last year's defence in Barcelona and was likely to take a more prominent role this time around. Team NZ said more sailors would be announced in due course. Discussions between team management and Burling, 34, had been ongoing since the America's Cup was held in Barcelona last year, however an agreement was unable to be reached. Team NZ chief executive Grant Dalton told 1News at the time that the deal did not stick as they required certainty of commitment. "2027 is a year when the guys have got to be here. We can't have people away at that time at all, and it's a critical period that the designers need the feedback of what they want." Dalton said he thought the offer to Burling was "pretty good" but that it required certain dates. "You do not win the America's Cup for the fourth time by prioritising anything else other than the organisation." The helmsman and three-time winner of the America's Cup said he had been part of something "truly special" in his decade at Team NZ. "I've had the privilege of being part of something truly special – from intense battles to unforgettable victories, and friendships that extend well beyond sailing. I'm immensely proud of everything we've achieved together and grateful to everyone who has been part of this chapter.
NZ Herald
30-04-2025
- Sport
- NZ Herald
On the Up: Peter Burling and Blair Tuke's conservation journey and their next big project
'Those couple of things definitely kickstarted it and then we spent a year before we launched Live Ocean to really dive into what we could do with our platform we have through sport and how we can do that here in Aotearoa.' For more than five years, the pair have been championing a healthy ocean through the foundation, supporting marine conservation projects and engaging partners to help drive action and awareness to protect the seas. 'It's been an incredible journey for the last five and a bit years,' Burling said. 'Live Ocean's [about a] healthy ocean for a healthy future, and part of that is really the excitement of the opportunity around what we could do in New Zealand. 'You've got a massive ocean space, we're on the bottom of the world, so we've got a lot of really good things going for us, but in some ways we need to be a lot better than we are. 'We need to continue to look after it, and we, travelling around the world, see so much devastation in so many beautiful places that we're really wanting to be part of a positive change for the oceans in New Zealand.' The pair have set their sights on their next project, looking to bring more attention to the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. The proposed bill plans to introduce 19 new marine protection areas in the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana, to help address environmental decline because of human activities in the area, but has stalled after two readings. Discover more In a joint effort between Live Ocean and the Black Foils New Zealand SailGP Team, sport and conservation will come together with their Foil4TheGulf event – where up to 200 foilers are expected to take to the water at the Royal Akarana Yacht Club on May 24. 'We've got a real problem in New Zealand that we as a whole and our attitudes towards how we treat the oceans is wrong or misaligned, in my opinion, where we take a lot of it for granted,' Tuke said. 'We think we're better than we are, so there's a huge amount we can do. The ocean is absolutely vital for us to have a healthy future here in Aotearoa and for the world, so let's start treating with that respect.' The event falls just before Burling, Tuke and the Black Foils head back to the United States for the next SailGP event in New York in early June. The team have had an extended break after the league's decision to cancel the scheduled regatta in Brazil in April after finding an issue with some of the wingsails in the 12-boat fleet. That decision came after the wingsail on the Australian boat collapsed during racing in San Francisco. 'I think everyone in SailGP's happy with the decision. The boats were in America about to get shipped out when they made the call and to be able to do a complete check and overhaul on the whole fleet and be back ready to go for New York, something that's incredibly exciting,' Burling said. 'With what they found in the post-mortem of the Australian incident, with a bonding issue in the sheer web of that wing, it's something that they really wanted to get ahead of and make sure those kinds of things can't happen. 'It's a really positive step. Obviously it's a shame to miss Rio, but [it's a] really positive step for the league.'
RNZ News
29-04-2025
- Sport
- RNZ News
Former Team NZ skipper Peter Burling proud of what he achieved
Peter Burling, Team New Zealand America's Cup skipper, 2024. Photo: PHOTOSPORT Former Team New Zealand skipper Peter Burling is proud of what he achieved with the team in the America's Cup. It was announced earlier this month Burling, who won the America's Cup three times with the syndicate, will leave the team. A statement released by Burling and Team New Zealand team principal Grant Dalton at the time said discussions between the two parties had been ongoing since defending the Cup in Barcelona last year, but an agreement was not able to be reached. Speaking for the first time since then, Burling had little more to offer. "I'm incredibly proud of everything we've done with Team New Zealand for the last 10 years, obviously we didn't manage to reach an agreement. "I have a great relationship with Grant and we get along really well and both have a massive amount of respect for one another." Burling and longtime teammate Blair Tuke are joint CEOs of the New Zealand Sail GP team, and Burling said that was something for him to focus on. "I'm looking forward to continuing to build the Black Foils." Burling and Tuke were speaking in Auckland to promote Foil4TheGulf, a new environmental initiative with Live Ocean, the foundation the pair were involved with to fund action for a healthy ocean. Team New Zealand was yet to announce their line-up for the next America's Cup, and Tuke wouldn't say if he would be involved. "Still working through exactly where my future lies but Live Ocean and the Black Foils is locked in." Tuke, who also won Olympic gold and silver with Burling, had high praise for what his teammate had done in the America's Cup. "For all of us it's the end of an era and a very successful one and Pete should be incredibly proud of all he has achieved and what we've achieved as a team." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Changes are coming for your mail: Postal service faces challenges − digital and DOGE
As a teenager, Ellen Dare Burling had an unusual summer job: Jumping off a moving ferryboat onto wooden piers, her arms filled with letters and packages destined for summer residents in their southern Wisconsin lake houses. She'd drop off the load, grab the outgoing mail and packages, race back along the pier and leap back aboard. The boat didn't stop moving, and neither did she, unless she fell in the water. Today, Burling, 61, is the general manager of the Lake Geneva Cruise Line and the tradition of the "mail jumpers" continues more than 100 years after the U.S. Postal Service first contracted with the company to deliver to homes without road access. "There are still people who are on their pier every day to get their mail," said Burling. "It's 100% done because of the tradition. It was more of a necessity in the old days, but now it's people who want to keep up the tradition." The emotional connection those Lake Geneva residents feel for their mail deliveries highlights the challenge in bringing changes to the U.S. Postal Service, which faces competing priorities to deliver to 165 million addresses six times a week while not losing money. Last year it lost $9.5 billion. Older than the United States itself, the postal service faces significant challenges as Americans send fewer letters, Christmas cards and wedding invitations. Now, President Donald Trump's federal cost-cutting efforts, led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, are targeting how to stop the service from losing money. But change comes hard to an institution that counted Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general and uses an army of 635,000 union workers and contractors, a fleet of specialized trucks, boats, float planes and even mules to help deliver about 300 pieces of mail daily. While news that Musk's DOGE team will be scouring the service for savings sparked recent protests and drew headlines, a reorganization was already well underway with a longstanding transformation called "Delivering for America." Those changes include cutting 10,000 jobs through early retirements, a new fleet of electric delivery trucks to replace existing trucks that keep breaking down, and slowing delivery for many rural customers. More than 75% of the postal service's budget goes to paying its roughly 635,000 workers, and those 10,000 job cuts reflect only a 1.5% staffing reduction. Some critics want to see even bigger changes, from closing post offices to merging the service with the Commerce Department, or even wholesale privatization like other countries have done. Although the postal service is technically an independent agency, Congress maintains close control, and retired New York University Prof. Steve Hutkins, a longtime postal service champion, said he's skeptical DOGE will be able to make significant inroads. "I don't know what Musk can do to make those things happen because of the legal barriers to making to them happen," he said. "If Musk wants to go there, good luck." Created by the Continental Congress in 1775, the post office helped foster a sense of national identity, creating post offices and helping maintain important road connections. The Civil War also sparked rapid growth in the service, which struggled to deliver mail from deployed Union soldiers to their families back home, prompting officials to implement a national rural delivery system that later expanded to deliver parcels and freight. For many years, the service even delivered newspapers for free on the grounds that a well-informed citizenry was key to success, the official postal service history says. "The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people," Congress said in creating the modern USPS. "It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities." But as the Internet grew in popularity, Americans sent fewer and fewer letters. In 2021, CBS News reported that 37% of Americans hadn't sent a letter in at least five years, and 15% of Americans had never sent a personal letter. While the service has raised prices to help compensate for the drop in first-class volume, it hasn't been enough. Last year, the service handled more than 116 billion pieces of mail, with most of that being presorted mailers, solicitations or other items that many people would consider "junk" mail. Overall mail volumes have been dropping since 2006, according to the postal service, but each year there are more and more addresses to deliver that to. Private companies like FedEx and UPS are outcompeting the postal service for some parcel deliveries, in part because it's a lot easier for them to charge higher prices for harder deliveries in rural area ‒ or to simply not deliver. In contrast, the USPS is required to deliver to virtually every address in the country, regardless of how much it costs. That's why it still uses mules or horses to deliver to Supai, Arizona, a remote Havasupai tribal village in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, or float planes to serve fishing villages off the Alaska coast. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stepped down Monday amidst growing protests from postal workers and supporters about proposed changes and service reductions. Appointed during the first Trump presidency, DeJoy had grown frustrated that his efforts to transform the service were being stalled by Congress. He had been planning to retire at the end of his five-year term but instead stepped down shortly after inking a deal with DOGE. "The simplest and most obvious ideas and solutions receive illogical and irrational scrutiny from those that have no responsibility for ensuring the financial viability of the Postal Service," DeJoy wrote in a Feb. 17 letter to the USPS governing board. Although it's supposed to be an independent agency, the service is subject to Congressional mandates and whims, including down to whether a specific neighborhood will get door-to-door delivery or a centralized "cluster" box. Members of Congress of both parties push back fervently whenever the service proposes to close a local post office. "In any other organization the disruptive accomplishments we have made to date would have created an easier path forward versus the Herculean one we still face today," DeJoy wrote. "This situation reflects how tragic our condition was when we started this journey, the negative consequences the past four years of a pandemic and historic inflation, the resistance we face to our initiatives for change, and to a certain extent, our failures in execution on what is otherwise a very solid business plan." Unionized postal workers oppose many of the changes DeJoy had been pushing, and staged nationwide protests earlier this month after heading that Musk's DOGE would be helping cut costs further. In a statement, APWU President Mark Dimondstein urged the service's Board of Governors to quickly replace DeJoy with someone committed to keeping the USPS accountable to the public. Union workers have argued that mail delivery is a vital public service that shouldn't necessarily turn a profit. "...any attack on the Postal Service is part of the ongoing oligarchs' coup against the vital public services our members and other public servants provide the country. We know that privatized postal services will lead to higher postage prices, and lower service quality to the public," Dimondstein said. "No matter who leads the USPS, it is – and must remain – the People's Postal Service." Hutkins, the retired NYT professor, runs a longstanding "Save the Post Office" website where he chronicled efforts by DeJoy and others to trim costs. Hutkins more than a decade ago got involved with efforts to keep his local post office open, and has emerged as one of the service's staunchest defenders. He's skeptical any significant changes are coming quickly. Unlike the executive branch, the postal service isn't directly under Trump's control. That means elected lawmakers will have to explicitly change laws governing service rules about delivery frequency and pricing, he said. "For any of this to happen, which requires Congress, I don't see the votes to do something major," Hutkins said. "I'm a little skeptical about anything radical happening." In Wisconsin, Burling and other Lake Geneva Cruise Line workers are gearing up for another summer season of delivering the mail via boat. Burling's kids also served as mail runners, and she feels a close emotional connection to the service, even if it's not quite as critical as it once was. "Because it has been such a long tradition, it's something people are attached to and really, really value," she said. "I felt guilty for years when I stopped sending out my bills with a check in the mail, and started paying online." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Postal service faces major changes as DOGE works across government
