America’s Cup Committee Rejects Proposals for Racing 90-Foot Boats

The America’s Cup Defense Committee on Saturday said it would not be rushed into opening competition for the cup next year, as urged by some challengers, and rejected any notion of racing 90-foot boats as financially prohibitive to most yacht clubs.

Sticking with the 12-meter boats that have been raced since the 1950s, and spacing the Cup defenses by three years, is “in the best interest of sporting competition,” said John Marshall, vice chairman of the defense committee, at a press conference at the San Diego Yacht Club.

“The (12-meter) format guarantees access to all who are qualified,” he said, while racing 90-foot-boats, which he called “dinosaurs,” would “substantially increase the cost and limit the number of competitors.”

The committee’s decisions came in the wake of challenges by New Zealand and Australia that the America’s Cup be defended in 1988 with 90-foot boats, nearly twice as long at the waterline as the 12-meter yachts. Great Britain, while not directly calling for a race next year, said it too would be willing to race in 1988 with the bigger boats.

But Marshall noted that of the 15 challenges so far received by the America’s Cup Defense Committee, only three yacht clubs are prepared to sail the larger boats, and that a number of clubs, including one in West Germany, have specifically said they would be unable to compete with 90-foot boats.

The committee also said it would not entertain single defense matches between the San Diego Yacht Club and sole challengers, at the exclusion of other yacht clubs.

The two-club matches, the 90-foot boats and a 1988 defense are all “unacceptable to the San Diego Yacht Club and Sail America Foundation, as tending to limit access to the event and diminish the quality of competition,” said a memorandum prepared Saturday in response to challengers.

The multiple-challenger format with 12-meter boats “has been the accepted practice for many years and is so obviously necessary to accommodate the widespread desire to participate,” the letter said. “That remains our firm intention.”

And Marshall made it clear the committee would have nothing to do with staging a defense of the Cup in 1988.

To rush amateur crew and syndicate back to sea at the expense of their families and businesses “is unacceptable,” Marshall said. He noted, too, that the New York Yacht Club and the Royal Perth Yacht Club have long stood by the three-year schedule “to ensure optimum competition,” even though the Australian group was one of those urging a 1988 defense.

“It would be impossible for others to prepare again, or for newcomers to learn the ropes and have a chance,” if races were held next year, he said.

Neither Marshall nor other committee members said they could discuss a supposed “loophole” in the document governing custody of the Cup that was cited by New Zealand in seeking a 1988 challenge.

Marshall said only that the San Diego Yacht Club would not be rushed into a defense. “The club holding the Cup has to take leadership to maintain the prestige it has attained,” he said, adding that “the purpose of the activity has to be satisfied--legally and morally.”

Jerry Driscoll, chairman of the America’s Cup Defense Committee, said the committee members met briefly for the first time on Saturday and tended to organizational matters, including the matter of a budget. “Most of us don’t like spending our own money,” he quipped.

He said the committee hopes to announce the location and dates of the next Cup challenge by Nov. 1.