Aussies Will Be Back to Take the Cup Home

Atlantic City, perhaps. No, Long Beach. Or possibly Honolulu. Or San Francisco. Maybe even good old Newport, R.I.

Nah. None of the above. San Diego. Yeah. That’s it. San Diego. That’s the place. That’s where it will be.

Now, let’s see-- who will be there? President Kemp, of course. Or President Bush. Or President Hart. Or President Jackson. Yeah. That’s it. President Jackson. Sure. Jesse just loves these yacht club shindigs.

OK, who else? What’s her name, the San Diego mayor. Yeah. She’ll show up. And the commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club. Frederick Frye, or Thurston Howell III, or whatever his name is. Yeah. He gets to introduce President Jackson.

We can see it now. The year: 1990. The place: America. The Cup: America’s. A Navy band strikes up a march. Twelve men in blazers--with little anchors on their pockets--file onto the stage. Maybe even a woman or two. Maybe a dozen women. What the hell, it’s almost the 21st Century.

A throng of 5,000 mobs the yacht club’s terrace. A couple of national anthems are played. There are opening remarks by the commodore. Then a speech by the President. Then a word from the mayor. There is much, much applause. There is even a Bravo! or two. Lots of smiles by Brad and Chip and Biff. A few sniffles from Bitsy and Muffy and Mimsy.

At last, then, comes the event everyone has come to see. The passing of the Cup. The giving of the “auld mug.” The spoils going to the victors. The shining silver America’s Cup trophy, that 139-year-old oversized hood ornament, is officially forked over by the United States of America to the new keeper of the Cup . . .

. . . New Zealand? Yeah, could be. Italy? No, not Italy. Too much linguine. Guy can’t get up the mast. Canada? Nah, they freeze water up there and skate on it. Germany? Sure, why not? Das yacht. Japan? Definitely a possibility. Probably a compact yacht, with a computerized woman’s voice that says: “Port boom is ajar.”

No, not Japan. Australia. Absolutely. Australia. The one the Aussies have been waiting for--waiting for three long years. The Cup that they won in 1983 and then lost in 1987. The Cup that was up, and then down, and then up. The Cup that was as sacred to the Australians as the Lost Ark was to the Raiders.

All you had to do was be in Western Australia on that fateful day, Friday, Feb. 6, 1987, to understand what that 8.7-pound, 27-inch hunk of silver meant to these people.

It stood for success, for accomplishment, for pride, for patriotism, for skill, for technology, for courage. It represented the greatest sporting achievement ever by an Australian team--not by a curly haired female tennis player or by a platinum-headed male golfer, but by a team.

It told the world that there was something in which Australia--not an Australian, but Australia --was the best there was.

No wonder R.J. (Bob) Hawke, the prime minister, stood before a yard full of people at the Royal Perth Yacht Club that day and told the triumphant Americans to take good care of the Cup. He knew how much it meant to his compatriots. He knew, no matter how much they all admired the American skipper Dennis Conner, how they hated to see it go.

The prime minister said he understood how Conner must have felt when he lost the thing at Newport in 1983. “A very hefty kick in the guts,” was the vivid way he described it.

Because Hawke suddenly had that very same feeling. He hadn’t spent one minute on that inadequate Aussie boat, Kookaburra III, but he had been aboard in spirit, just as most of the continent’s population seemed to be. He knew that the America’s Cup had transcended stereotypes, that it had become something much more than just millionaires determining which of them had the fastest yacht.

Hawke scanned the attentive crowd and said, with an evangelical fervor: “There’s been a lot of nonsense talked over the years, ladies and gentlemen, about the America’s Cup being an elitist exercise, the plaything of the very wealthy. And it’s true that without those with wealth, we couldn’t have the America’s Cup.

“But we shouldn’t be jealous of them. We shouldn’t break them down. We should say thank you to them, for making this great event possible. Because I think that these last few months have shown that the America’s Cup, beyond almost any other sporting event, has the capacity to arouse the best in the spirit of a nation.”

And before he was done, the prime minister was promising to do everything in his power to go about bringing the Cup back where it belonged, and was asking Conner to take Australia’s best wishes to the people of America, since there was “no country with which we in Australia have closer bonds of interest. We share deep commitments to freedom, to enterprise, and to the liberty of individuals.”

And the audience nodded and applauded, and shouted out in agreement, and there was little an American in the crowd could do but be amazed at the ardor and fervor of it all, because he hadn’t seen this many Australians so concerned about their future since “On the Beach.”

He kept trying to imagine such a scene at the next America’s Cup, the 1990 one, in San Diego or Francisco or Pedro or wherever--tried to imagine any Americans in attendance at the ceremony being even half this anguished at the loss of the Cup, tried to envision government leaders rallying everyone together toward the all-important common goal of winning 12-meter yacht races.

So, it’s 1990, see, and the Americans have lost, and the Australians are getting their trophy back, and they finally can sip the cognac from the America’s Cup replica they were presented in 1987 as a keepsake until the Cup could be reclaimed.

And the President of the United States stands before his people, to console them after a very hefty kick in the guts, and he tells them to be brave, to be strong, to persevere in this time of great sorrow, until the Americans can pool their resources once more and win back the Cup.

And one of the Americans, speaking for the rest, will step forward, look their leader squarely in the eye and call up to him: “Hell, if the Australians want it that much, let ‘em have it.”