Imagine enough people to fill the 70,000-seat Qualcomm Stadium to capacity, add another 5,000 or so for good measure, then cram them all onto the B Street and Broadway piers and adjacent shoreside vantage points. Add to that mob scene dozens of boats, ranging from kayaks to 150-foot superyachts, each with horns filling the air with a deafening cacophony of ear-piercing noise, packed hull-to-hull between the two piers.

That was the scene at Auckland's Viaduct Basin when the triumphant Team New Zealand returned to a hero's welcome after crushing Italy's Prada Challenge, 5-0, in the 30th America's Cup match. For the first time in the 149-year history of the America's Cup a country other than America successfully defended the Auld Mug, sailing's most prestigious prize.

The party began well before the race was over, the result inevitable. The hapless Italians were lambs led to slaughter. The celebrating continued well past the witching hour. Bars were allowed to operate round the clock and they did.

The degree of celebration stunned even the locals. They had never witnessed the like. Auckland police reckoned it was bigger than the New Year’s Eve millennium madness.

All this over a boat race? Much ado about nothing more than a garish, Victorian-era silver-plated pitcher? To comprehend this reaction is to understand not only that the national psyche is that of a perpetual underdog, but that it’s primarily through sports that New Zealand — often perceived as a nation of backwoods sheep shearers — reaches center stage in the international arena. Excluding egotistical Americans makes victory even more satisfying.

On a per capita basis, this nation of 3.8 million people — roughly the population of Arizona — has garnered more than its share of world championships and Olympic gold medals. But the past six months have not been kind to the sporting Kiwis. The exalted All Blacks rugby team was supposed to win the World Cup. They barely got to the semis, while their arch rival Australia went on to triumph. The pride of the nation had become a national embarrassment.

In the World Netball Championship, the Kiwis lost a heartbreaker to the Aussies. The Rugby League Tri-Series had the same result. At the time of the America's Cup final, the Australian cricket team was using the Kiwi side for batting practice.

Now comes the America's Cup, the biggest event ever hosted by the island nation, with five challengers from the historically dominant United States alone. Losing was unthinkable.

Winning the America's Cup, even by an elitist group of yachties ungrateful to their sponsors and adoring fans, gave the entire nation something to be proud of and for which it could hold its head up high. It put New Zealand in the world spotlight again, not to mention the cover of Time magazine. It was a national coup.

The number of Kiwis watching the event on television was about the same as in the United States, which has 70 times the population of New Zealand. (Meanwhile, ESPN's Cup coverage suffered a 25 percent ratings drop compared to the 1995 contest in San Diego.)

National pride was not the only thing at stake in the America's Cup, however. Tourism is becoming New Zealand's No. 1 industry. The months-long regatta pumped an estimated US$4 million into the Auckland economy alone and boosted travel nationwide. Retaining the Cup will fuel the tourism boom for years to come.

Curiously, the celebration, not just in New Zealand but in countries worldwide, actually began a month earlier when San Francisco's AmericaOne was eliminated by Prada. The supposedly impartial media center erupted in shouts of joy and loud clapping when Italy won the challenger series. Those joining the impromptu celebration were predominantly Italians, of course, but also French, Spanish, British, Japanese, Australians — and New Zealanders.

Yes, they were cheering for the Italians, but they were also jeering the Americans. The intensity of the outburst was because the imperious Yanks had been knocked off their high horse. For the first time in the history of the event, there would be no American boat in the America's Cup final. The world's greatest power had been knocked out of the event it had dominated for one and a half centuries.

The final blow came when the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron did not invite the battered New York Yacht Club to return as Challenger of Record, favoring Italy's Punta Ala YC instead. The Americans would have virtually no control over the event they founded.

The anti-American attitude was palpable. The gloating over the fate of the five American teams, including San Diego’s Dennis Conner, was not subtle. People asked me how I felt. Other than one French woman who seemed genuinely interested in my feelings, it was obvious that the question was not motived by empathy, but seized on as an opportunity to rub my nose in it.

In a letter to the editor of the New Zealand Herald, a Canadian woman wrote: "Thank goodness the America's Cup is no longer in the hands of the Americans."

So it was not just the New Zealand victory that fueled the jubilant celebration on Auckland's waterfront. It was also driven by the fact that the world's greatest superpower was not just knocked out of this technology-driven event, but tossed out on its ear.

Will America, let alone San Diego, ever claim the America's Cup again? If it returns to the United States at all, it’s more likely to land in San Francisco or New York, which it called home for 132 years.

Conner, who brought the America's Cup to America's Finest City in 1987 only to lose it to the Kiwis eight years later, says he will challenge again in 2003. But it’s doubtful he will be representing San Diego. Yacht clubs in other areas of the country, including Florida, have expressed an interest in having Conner represent them.

The deciding factor will likely be how much a club and its members can contribute to Conner's fund-raising effort. Conner represented tiny Cortez Racing Association this go-round, but its membership is primarily middle-class boat owners who don’t have the individual wealth or the boardroom clout to raise the tens of millions of dollars needed for a competitive Cup campaign.

One thing is for certain. We’ll know the future role of America in the America's Cup in three years' time.

Larry M. Edwards, a San Diego journalist, has been in New Zealand working on the official America's Cup Web site, www.americascup.org. This is his final New Zealand Notes.