Sometimes it can feel as if the haka’s primal intensity is diluted by its sheer ubiquity. Take the recent America’s Cup, where New Zealand skipper Peter Burling filed into a Barcelona auditorium alongside Maori tribes people of the Ngati Whatua Orakei. There, in front of a crowd of befuddled journalists, the indigenous troupe mounted the dais to deliver their blood-curdling war cry.
It fell short, it would be fair to say, of leaving British skipper Ben Ainslie trembling in terror. “Not really intimidated, to be honest,” he said. “But it was a lot of fun.”
