America’s Cup Notebook : Cup and Crew Could Be Headed for the White House

Some elements of the Australian press often treat rumors as fact, and the latest was that President Reagan would fly to Perth in Air Force One to bring Dennis Conner and the Cup home to the White House.

The facts, according to Stars & Stripes syndicate head Malin Burnham, are that neither Reagan nor Air Force One is flying to Australia, but Conner and the crew probably will visit the White House when they return.

“Calls have been going both ways,” Burnham said. “It does look like the President wants us back there, but no U.S. government plane will be involved.”

The Stars & Stripes people will fly home on a commercial airline, but they don’t know when.

“We all have individual bookings we made ourselves,” Burnham said. “I made mine eight months ago to leave here on the 15th. I had to put in something. Obviously, we want to go as a team.”

But after Stars & Stripes won the first three races, Qantas, the leading Australian airline, was swamped with visitors trying to update their reservations out and may not give Stars & Stripes folk any special consideration.

Burnham: “I don’t think Qantas would want to be the official air carrier to get the Cup out of Australia.”

Some of the current crew--Jon Wright, Scott Vogel, Kyle Smith and Tom Whidden--visited the White House after losing the Cup at Newport, R.I., in 1983.

There is the much-told story about Reagan telephoning Conner to console him. Whidden’s wife, Betsy, answered the phone, and Whidden called to Conner: “Hey, Dennis, the President’s on the phone. He wants to tell you you screwed up.”

“As Dennis and I were getting on an airplane in Providence to go home, arrangements were being made to get us to the White House,” Burnham said. “But we were too exhausted. Some of the crew that lived in the East went.”

Vogel recalled: “We just took it as a chance to go to Washington. I’d never been there. It was a whirlwind trip. We went to the National Air and Space Museum--in the front door and out the back, spent two minutes watching Congress and had lunch where all the Congressmen hang out.

“It’s a nice city. I want to go back.”

Fellow crewman John Barnitt told Vogel: “I’ll take you next week, Scotty.”

If he visits the White House, Burnham probably will be more gracious and tactful about the Aussies than he was after Monday’s race, when Stars & Stripes beat Kookaburra III by 1:46 to take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Burnham called Kookaburra III skipper Iain Murray a quitter. Australians phoning the Stars & Stripes office Tuesday said Burnham called Murray a “wimp.”

“I don’t even use that word,” Burnham said. “If I said something to offend anyone, I apologize to Iain Murray and all of Australia.”

Burnham had said Monday: “I was terribly disappointed when I saw Iain give up today. You gotta have heart. Murray obviously gave up.”

Burnham particularly criticized Murray for sailing directly to the lay line on the second beat, which he started 57 seconds behind, then tacking for the mark, instead of trying to engage Conner in a tacking match.

Tuesday Burnham said he thought “the tactics and aggressiveness of Kookaburra vanished on the third beat. It seemed a beaten boat. You have to continue to fight every inch of the way.”

There seems no doubt, Kookaburra III fouled up.

Stars & Stripes’ lay day Tuesday was another good call by its weather experts, Lee Davis and Chris Bedford. Despite leading, 3-0, Conner’s side Monday night elected not to sail the next day because the winds were expected to be light and shifty enough to give Kookaburra III an advantage.

Sure enough, at race time, the wind was blowing only 7 knots from the southeast, with a 6-knot southwesterly moving toward the race course from Rottnest Island. That’s how it was in Saturday’s first race on two upwind legs when Kookaburra III cut Stars & Stripes’ lead in half--the only time it has demonstrated an edge.

“The winds certainly would have been light at race start time and for the next couple of hours,” said Don Ward, the America’s Cup forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth.

The wind didn’t increase to 12 to 14 knots until after 4 o’clock, about the time the race would have finished. That’s what Davis and Ward had been saying since Sunday. Apparently, the Kookaburras’ Peter Rye was telling them something else.

If Kookaburra had called a lay day for Monday, when it lost in winds of 12 to 18 knots, Stars & Stripes would have been forced to sail Tuesday, and the score might have been 2-1 instead of 3-0.

One of the lesser-known leaders of the Stars & Stripes crew weighs only 110 pounds.

She is Karen Smith, 29, wife of grinder Kyle Smith and the team’s aerobics and physical trainer.

“I don’t think people realize how fit you have to be to race in these conditions,” Smith said. “You also need balance and agility because these boats have no lifelines, and those are life-threatening conditions if you fall off.”

Smith is assistant director of the Hospital Corporation of America’s Lakeside Hospital Health and Fitness Center in Metairie, La. Starting when the crew was based in Hawaii, Smith woke them at 6 a.m. for aerobics three days a week, her radio knocking out a rock ‘n roll rhythm. The alternate days were for weight training.

For a while, even Dennis Conner showed up, achieving a sleek physique that has since expanded again among the pleasures of entertaining syndicate sponsors and guests in Fremantle.

“Dennis got busy with things that were more important,” Smith said, tactfully.

Whidden and navigator Peter Isler also attended regularly, although their tasks are more mental than physical.

“Exercise isn’t needed to make the afterguard good,” Smith said. “But it makes you keener.”

Smith, who normally runs a pre-natal fitness course, said she had to train for two months before working with Stars & Stripes’ crew.

“I had to be more fit than they were so I could lead and talk,” she said.

America’s Cup Notes The Kookaburra syndicate said it would mount a $35-million campaign in 1990 and asked the government for a 150% tax deduction “as a research and development project,” executive Ken Court said. “There are many applications for the technology outside of sailing.” Court said he hoped for a “combined Australian effort.” . . . A local resident had a solution of what to do about all those Western Australia license plates that read: “WA Home of the America’s Cup.” She added an S after the WA.