America’s Cup Trials : An Expansive Conner Back in Australia

Dennis Conner shared a plane ride from Sydney to Perth with Australia’s national cricket team and invited the squad to go sailing.

The team returned a note of thanks, explaining it would be busy playing against England for five days in Perth but hoped it could sail with Conner when it returns in January.

The man who lost the America’s Cup in 1983 was in an affable mood Thursday after a trip home to San Diego to check on his drapery business and make a speaking appearance at a business luncheon.

Asked why he had delayed returning to his third-place Stars & Stripes to make a speech, Conner said: “I couldn’t resist it. I had this dream I saw a headline: ‘Dennis Conner beats Pope into Sydney.’ ”

Pope John Paul II is visiting Australia as part of a two-week tour through Asia and the Pacific.

America’s Cup Notes

Australian designer Ben Lexcen, whose winged keel gave Alan Bond’s Australia II the winning edge in 1983, has received some unfavorable feedback after criticizing New Zealand’s KZ7 as “a brittle boat.” Lexcen has been the target of abusive phone calls and critical mail from irate Kiwis. Meanwhile, syndicate spokesman Vern Reid confirmed that Lexcen was in London but refused to comment on reports that while in Europe Lexcen might visit the Netherlands, where the winged keel was developed. Many experts, including Dennis Conner, the man who lost the Cup to Australia, have predicted that Lexcen will have to “pull something out of the bag” to topple the Kookaburras. . . . An appeal against the disqualification of Kookaburra II against Australia III in the defender series last week has been rejected.