America's Cup: How New Zealand has fared in the final match for the Auld Mug

When the 35th America's Cup match begins on Sunday (NZ time), it will be the seventh time a Kiwi boat has competed in the final contest for the Auld Mug, and the sixth time for Team New Zealand. 

Team NZ will have been involved in six of the past seven matches - twice as the defender, four times as the challenger - only missing out in 2010, when Alinghi and Oracle faced off in a Deed of Gift match and there was no chance of them being involved.

Here's how the Kiwi contenders have fared, starting in 1988.

1988 - Sail America Foundation defeated New Zealand Challenge 2-0

This was a Deed of Gift match, sailed under the rules laid out in the founding document of the America's Cup, which say boats must be less than 27m long at the waterline (ie, where they touch the water), and little else. Mercury Bay Yacht Club's New Zealand Challenge, backed by Sir Michael Fay, took on the San Diego Yacht Club and Dennis Conner, using a monohull, KZ-1, that pushed right up against that limit and was regarded as the fastest in the world.

Conner opted for a smaller catamaran that was faster still, and easily won the best-of-three contest, 2-0, while becoming infamous in New Zealand for his arrogant, dismissive attitude, which reached its peak when he walked off the Holmes show on its opening night the following year. It wouldn't be the last time the country ran into Conner.

1995 - Team Dennis Conner lost to Team New Zealand 0-5

Fay stopped backing the Mercury Bay Yacht Club after a failed attempt in 1992, and in his place rose Sir Peter Blake, a former round-the-world sailing champion, and Team New Zealand, representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Their boat was dubbed Black Magic, skippered by Russell Coutts. They won the Louis Vuitton Cup qualifiers with ease to become the challenger, then beat Conner's Young America 5-0 in the Cup itself in San Diego, a triumph that became known as the Blackwash.

Blake's lucky red socks became an iconic image, and Kiwis up and down the country began wearing them in a show of support. On returning home, Team NZ were paraded in front of huge crowds, and preparations began for a defence on home waters. Commentator PJ Montgomery produced the iconic line: "The America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup".

2000 - Team New Zealand defeated Prada Challenge 5-0

The Cup was held on the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland for the first time, and 11 boats from seven countries vied for the chance to be the challenger, including an Australian entry skippered by a teenage Jimmy Spithill, Team NZ's current nemesis. Italy's Prada Challenge won through, after a four-month slugfest, but they were no match for Team NZ in the match itself.

Still led by Blake and skippered by Coutts, the Kiwis won 5-0, and were so dominant that Coutts allowed a young Dean Barker to take charge for the final race. In the words of Montgomery: "The America's Cup [was] still New Zealand's Cup". It was the first time a non-American boat had ever defended the Cup.

2003 - Team New Zealand lost to Alinghi 0-5

Dave Dobbyn's Loyal provided the soundtrack to this campaign, which was the second in a row on the Hauraki Gulf. Blake had stood down from the team after the 2000 win, and was shot and killed by pirates in South America in 2001. Team NZ had also lost Coutts and tactician Brad Butterworth to Alinghi, a Swiss challenger, and the duo returned to Auckland with a vengeance to face off against new skipper Barker. Team NZ unveiled a boat which had an interesting wrinkle - a hull appendage, known as the hula, which was meant to increase it's waterline length, and therefore it's speed.

That didn't matter in the end, as the boat suffered from major reliability issues, particularly in strong winds. In the first race, they had multiple gear failures, and took on water; in the fourth race, sailed in rough seas, their mast snapped; and in the fifth race, they broke their spinnaker pole, which helps hold the sail up. They lost all three of those, and two others, and slumped to a 5-0 defeat.

2007 - Alinghi defeated Team New Zealand 5-2

With Switzerland a landlocked country, the next event took place in Valencia, Spain. Team NZ brought Grant Dalton into the mix, and were again skippered by Dean Barker. After a shock loss in their Louis Vuitton Cup opener, they were largely untroubled as they emerged as the challenger. Racing in the Cup itself was very close, but after going up 2-1, Team NZ lost four in a row to fall to a 5-2 defeat, with the final race decided by one second.

After this event, the Cup became the subject of a legal battle between Alinghi, the defender, and Oracle, who eventually raced under the Deed of Gift rules in 2010 - the Swiss using a catamaran, and the Americans using a trimaran. Oracle won, setting the stage for a shift away from monohull boats to multihulls for the two events since.

2013 - Oracle Team USA defeated Team New Zealand 9-8

One that many would want to forget, as Dean Barker's crew gave up an 8-1 lead on San Francisco Bay to lose to Oracle, who had Coutts as their chief executive, and Spithill as their skipper. Team NZ had been the first to exploit a loophole in the rules and master foiling, which gave them an early advantage, but Oracle were able to get a better handle on it by the end of the Cup match and were dominant down the stretch. 

It looked like this defeat might have been the end of the road for Team NZ, but they regrouped and had a reshuffle, with Dalton moving to an off-water role, Barker leaving for a Japanese challenge, and Glenn Ashby and Peter Burling taking charge on the water. Now they're back in the Cup match for a seventh time, against Oracle again, starting on Sunday (NZ time).