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After Race 1, it was definitely tears. Team New Zealand broke so much gear they had to retire from the race after 25minutes. Alinghi won by sailing round and completing the course.

. .. .. . . . . .

After Race 2, it was tears again, after a nail-biting close race where Team New Zealand led most of the way. Right at the end, Alinghi overtook and won by seven seconds. Race 3 was won by Alinghi, and Race 4 was another terrible day for Team New Zealand, as their mast broke, and they could not finish the race. Race 5 was again won by Alinghi - or Team Switz-Zealand as some of the papers called it.

The America's Cup is now held by Switzerland. You can see the cup beside Ernesto Bertarelli, and Russell Coutts. This is the first time the cup has been won by a challenging team the first time they tried - every other winner has had to try and try and try before winning. And Russell Coutts has been skipper on more America's Cup wins than anyone else before him, even though it was sailing for two different countries.

Bertarelli, after winning the cup

It will be very interesting to see what happens in the future. The next time the Louis Vuitton and America's Cup races are held, it will be in the Mediterranean - we don't know what country except that it won't be Switzerland, because they don't have a coastline or many sailors. (Miss Currie's guess is France - what is yours?) The other interesting thing is that the Challenger of Record (the club that the winners choose to run the Louis Vuitton and make the rules for all the defenders to follow) is from San Francisco, in the United States. It is Larry Ellison's club, the club behind the Oracle team.

Both these men are immensely rich, and they have so much money that they can put up 120 million dollars (Bertarelli) for an America's Cup campaign. New Zealand just doesn't have people with that sort of money, so they had to raise it from lots of different companies. They like to go to any country in the world and buy the skills and people they need, and they think it is old fashioned to have rules about sailors having to live in the country they sail for. What do you think?

Larry Ellison talking to reporters about Oracle

So what is the future for Team New Zealand? Will they mount another challenge for 2007 in Europe? Should they, or should they just give up? Do you think Dean Barker should tell people that his boat was no good, and let him down? Or should he stick up for his team? If he was offered lots of money by an overseas billionaire, do you think he would leave Team New Zealand, like the 6 men on Alinghi did in 2000? What would you do?