John MacDonald: Do you know what Sir Russell Coutts needs to do?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Do you know what Sir Russell Coutts needs to do?

He needs to pull his head in.

Because if his behaviour on Friday wasn’t ungracious enough - saying that a lack of flexibility and what he called “minority groups” having too much say, made Lyttelton non-viable for hosting the SailGP races - yesterday was just nuts.

What happened on Friday was a bit of a bombshell, because no one knew it was coming. I think I heard the mayor saying that he only knew about it 15 minutes beforehand.

So, on Friday, Sir Russell was saying that the minority groups had too much say and it was only going to work for SailGP if they could have the regatta in February next year, and they were told, apparently, that the last day of February might be the only option.

I’ll quote what he said on Friday: “Like a lot of things in New Zealand these days, there’s a few minority groups that have a huge say in what happens and that’s the way it works.”

And we know what he was getting at there, because he spelt it out when he really threw his toys out of the cot yesterday after racing on Saturday was cancelled because of the protected dolphins.

And I’ll get to that. But I thought when I heard him on Friday, that you couldn’t get a more ungracious way to behave when Christchurch bent over backwards to make this year’s New Zealand leg of SailGP happen after Auckland pulled the plug.

You’ll remember how Auckland has got contamination issues with the site that SailGP wanted to use for the spectator zone.

So, after the brilliant event here last year, ChristchurchNZ whipped into action and - hey presto - we had it here again this year. Not only that, we paid for the privilege, as you do with these things.

It was at a discounted price. But ratepayers paid money to SailGP nonetheless. So I thought Coutts was incredibly ungracious when, the day before racing was due to start, he was having a whinge about minority groups and Christchurch making it all a bit too difficult for him.

But then yesterday, he went full noise. Lord knows what Jason Pine was making of it when that ramped up. I’m not sure whether he’d seen a copy of the statement beforehand or not.

Coutts singled out the Lyttelton harbour master who, he said, was “extremely restrictive”. He also mentioned a marine biologist by name, saying she had lied about the Hector's dolphin being endangered.

But Sir Russell, between now and the next event in Bermuda, you might want to take some night classes in diplomacy. Because the way you behaved yesterday - Friday too, but yesterday in particular - is not the way you treat a city that came to your rescue just months ago and made this event happen for you.

He put a dampener on things right from the start. And no one knew it was coming.

And I just hope like hell that Christchurch doesn’t start falling over itself now to try and get him to bring SailGP back here.

If he wants to throw his toys out of the cot - that's his problem. Not ours.

He knew what he was signing up to. He’s signed a few contracts in his time. And, yes, maybe the Harbour Master might have been a bit difficult. And yes, he’s obviously got a beef with how much say iwi can have over things.

But, as someone from the iwi pointed out yesterday, they were only involved in things when the management plan to protect the dolphins was put together. They weren’t out on the water saying ‘no, no,no.”

That’s what Sir Russell probably wants us to think. But not the case.

I thought he behaved like an entitled muppet at the weekend. And I don’t think it’s going to do us any harm at all around the world. You might have heard people saying yesterday how embarrassing it all was, scrapping racing on Saturday because of dolphins.

But I think they’re wrong. Because not everyone in the world is a sailing fan. And, for a truckload of people, New Zealand might have actually gone up in their estimations for prioritising wildlife over a yacht race.

But we know, don’t we, why he was so fired up yesterday. It wasn’t because he loves New Zealand and all that. He didn’t go on air yesterday to tell us what a great bunch we all are here in Christchurch.

He went ape because Big Larry - Larry Ellison, the billionaire pouring the money into SailGP - he would’ve been on the blower on Saturday night after the dolphin thing, going nuts.

And even though I’ve been a big advocate for SailGP coming here (I was out watching both days at the weekend, just like last year; and I really pushed for us to get it here when Auckland couldn’t do it.).

But I’ve got no time for the behaviour we saw from Coutts at the weekend and, if that’s our turn at SailGP done for, so be it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.