Gentlemanly Series? Only Until Tabloids Print Fiction as Fact

At least we finally had some excitement.

For a while there, America’s Cup was so cute and cuddly, you wanted to take it home with you.

Not just the Cup itself, as Dennis Conner is in the process of doing.

The whole bloomin’ event.

It couldn’t have been sweeter. Two guys took their boats onto the ocean every day, had a nice little race, then came back ashore.

The winner told everybody what a darn good try the loser made, and said he wouldn’t be taking the next day’s victory for granted.

The loser told everybody what a fine job the winners did, and said his crew would be coming back the next day to, by God, keep trying.

The winner said he didn’t know why he was winning by a country kilometer, when the boats were supposed to be so evenly matched. All he knew was that every last man on his boat was doing a damn good job.

The loser said he didn’t know why he was losing by the length of a couple destroyers, no matter if the wind was howling across the Indian Ocean or light enough not to ripple his jacket. All he knew was that every last man on his boat was doing a bloody good job.

Naturally, a couple of people tried to make some waves.

After all, even though the television pictures were dramatic and the sunsets were beautiful, the actual amount of thrills and chills this America’s Cup event had supplied were, well, minimal.

It just hadn’t lived up to the buildup. It was a Super Bowl without the football.

The one thing you could usually count on every morning was that one of the tabloid newspapers would carry a story that nobody else in West Australia or the world was reporting that day.

Like the one when we first got here: “YANKS’ SECRET KEEL!” the front-page headline boomed, in the size of type American newspapers might use if, oh, Elvis came back to life and was kidnaped by the contras .

The story, which was about half the size of the headline, revealed breathlessly that the Americans had developed a secret “droopy-nosed keel” that would help them regain the Cup from the Australians, who had won it in 1983 with a secret “winged keel.”

The droopy-nosed keel--seen exclusively by the newspaper’s crack reporter--would revolutionize 12-meter racing, which hadn’t had a breakthrough since the last Cup race and therefore was in desperate need of re-revolutionizing.

Well, after Stars & Stripes had been racing Kookaburra III for almost a week, the only droopy nose in evidence was the one on Dennis Conner’s face, the one he covered with white cream. Many hoped he would give everyone a peek at the keel when the series was over, as Alan Bond of Australia II did in 1983. Keels are big secrets in yacht racing these days.

Then there was the “already packing” exclusive.

After Conner won a couple of races, some fool from a local TV show stood up and challenged the Yankee skipper with a tip he had received that the Americans had already started packing their gear for the trip home--that they were that sure of victory.

Conner calmly replied that yes, his people had begun packing, but only because they had been here for months, and had tons of stuff to pack, and had 12,000 miles to travel, and wanted to be as organized as possible so they could head for home two or three days after the Cup final ended, win, lose or drown.

An American reporter (ahem) could vouch for Conner on this, because when he arrived in Fremantle, several days before the first race against the Kookaburras, Conner’s campers already were packing up their belongings. They hadn’t won a thing yet.

Nevertheless, one of the tabloids the next morning screamed across page one: “THEY’RE ALREADY PACKING.”

Oh, those cocky Yanks.

The sailors themselves spent all of their efforts steering clear of such trouble. One day, as the second Cup race was getting under way, the Aussies flew a protest flag to indicate their objection to something or other, which is quite common in this sort of racing. After losing, though, the Kookas elected to forgo the protest, simply because after being beaten so badly, they didn’t want to look like poor sports.

The bomb threat came the next day.

Iain Murray and his crew were out on the water when word came that someone had phoned in, claiming to have planted an explosive device on the boat. It was as ludicrous as the thought of somebody planting a bomb on the favorite at the Kentucky Derby. But, you’ve got to check these things out.

Well, Murray lived to tell the tale, but within 24 hours, Aussie tabloids were leading off the front page with “CALLER THREATENS TO KILL CONNER.” Yes, the paper reported, a caller to a Melbourne TV station said the American skipper would be shot.

You don’t suppose anybody from the tabloid might have made that call, do you? Nah. They wouldn’t do anything like that.

After all this poppycock, there at last came some authentic controversy, just before the fourth race. Malin Burnham, the Sail America syndicate camp president, did a television interview in which he did not exactly rave about the opposing crew’s performance in the previous day’s race.

Burnham casually alluded to a “lack of heart” and “giving up” and said, with regard to, Iain Murray, that in American football, a lot of talented quarterbacks never win the Super Bowl, and “this kid is never going to win the Super Bowl.” Or, that is, the America’s Cup.

Shortly thereafter, Burnham said he didn’t mean this and he didn’t mean that, and if that’s what he said, he was sorry, and it wasn’t supposed to come out that way.

And Iain Murray said “some people talk without thinking,” but what the heck, better to just let it slide.

And out he went for the fourth race, where, with any luck, he would stun Stars & Stripes with his new, exclusive, top-secret Snoopy-nosed keel.