Aussies Really Needed Croc III, Not Kooka III

Ben Lexcen, the man who designed the winged keel that wrested the America’s Cup from the New York Yacht Club after 132 years, doesn’t expect to see it again, at least not in Australia.

“It’ll take 1,000 years, well, maybe 100 years, to get it back again,” Lexcen told the New York Times after Dennis Conner regained the prize Wednesday. “Who’s going to do it? Nobody will ever have the advantage we had with the winged keel.

“We don’t have any sailors in Australia, we have rowers. We had two rowers on Kookaburra III who’d never been on a sailboat before. The thing is, when we won in ‘83, we had a rifle going against a club, and Dennis still almost beat us. It’s our sunburned minds.

“We need more Crocodile Dundees down here, we really do.”

Add Lexcen: After bidding farewell to the Cup, he said: “And the New York Yacht Club can kiss it goodby, too. They’ll never get it back now. If it’s not in San Diego, it’ll be in some other nation. They better do something else with that trophy room. Make it a bar, maybe.”

From Todd Phipers of the Denver Post: “Now that ESPN has turned the America’s Cup into a surprise television hit, the three commercial networks will dive into the competition to be the host in three years. That means, of course, that the races will be run under the lights, so the telecast can be aired in prime time in New York. Also, the yachts will carry anchors that they will drop on a signal from the network, to hold their positions during commercial breaks.”

It’s-all-relative dept.: Said Times librarian Doug Conner when asked during the America’s Cup if he was related to Dennis Conner: “I wasn’t in ‘83; this year, maybe.”

Trivia Time: What do Robert Parish of Boston, Johnny Moore of San Antonio and Benoit Benjamin of the Clippers have in common? (Answer below.)

From Kansas basketball Coach Larry Brown, denying for the umpteenth time that he is leaving to coach the New York Knicks: “I haven’t talked to anybody. Not Scotty Stirling, the Knicks’ general manager, not Ed Koch, the mayor of New York, nobody. Not even a Manhattan cab driver.”

Said Nebraska basketball Coach Danny Nee when asked the best way to guard Missouri sharpshooter Derrick Chievous: “How many am I allowed to put on him? I’d like to put me and about four guys from Brooklyn on him--when he gets off the bus.”

After the Atlanta Falcons had been rejected by Dick Vermeil and Terry Donahue and struck out with Mike Ditka, Dan Reeves and Bill Parcells before settling on Marion Campbell as their new coach, cars in Atlanta were sporting these bumper stickers: “Honk if you’ve been turned down by the Falcons.”

Trivia Answer: All three wear No. 00.

Quotebook

Clemson basketball star Horace Grant, after watching twin brother Harvey Grant of Oklahoma in a nationally televised game: “Do I really look like that?”