America’s Cup Still Bitter to Kiwis

Make no mistake about it. New Zealanders are passionately united on two national issues: They don’t want U.S. nuclear ships in their waters, and they think the boys in the black hats--the San Diego Yacht Club and Sail America--cheated them out of the America’s Cup.

Granted, most San Diegans have long forgotten about the “coma off Point Loma.” Skipper Dennis Conner may care. Former Sail America head Malin Burnham may care. But the average San Diegan has no idea that the New York Court of Appeals is expected to hand down the final decision on the fate of the America’s Cup any day now.

You remember the America’s Cup, that silver trophy that has proven to be a boon to the legal profession? Micheal Fay, the Kiwi bad boy banker blew into town with a surprise challenge and a yacht that looked like an aircraft carrier. The San Diegans replied with a catamaran that won an embarrassingly easy victory. The lawyers were off and running.

Judge Carmen Ciparick of the New York Supreme Court (our Superior Court) said the catamaran wasn’t fair and gave the cup to the New Zealanders. An appeals court voted 4-1 to overturn her decision and give it back to San Diego. Now the highest appeals court in the state of New York, which oversees the administration of the cup, is deliberating. The whole thing’s got New Zealand jumpy.

“You bloody Americans cheated,” blurted video repairman Dereck Bunting as he sat in a Queenstown bar gulping a hefty lager. An American protested that it is a complicated story, and that cheated might not be the right word.

“Complicated, hell. It’s not complicated. Your (expletive) Conner cheated.”

The Kiwis are as determined as ever to pinch the cup and bring it below the Equator and across the date line. To them, the sailing in San Diego was just one round in the battle. New Zealanders visiting Auckland stop by the docks at the foot of Albert Street to stand and stare at the losing boat, the New Zealand, now a little worse for wear and plastered with American Express logos.

Skipper David Barnes, still employed by the New Zealand Challenge, conducts tours of the boat for clients of the Fay-Richwhite investment banking company. The dialogue goes something like this:

“What we were planning IF the San Diegans had built a similar boat. . . . Of course this boat wasn’t made to sail against a catamaran . . . . The San Diegans didn’t have to worry about the same things we did. . . “

Barnes’ comments received the same sort of knowing nods one sees from listeners hearing a eulogy for a brave soldier.

But it’s not just the immediate family, so to speak, that still worries itself over the cup.

In the trendy and sometimes raucous Plusone Restaurant in the Auckland neighborhood of Ponsonby, a burly former rugby star argues with friends over “what might have been” if “the Americans had seen fit to play it straight” and sail in a monohull.

In Club Roma, a disco in Auckland where singles go to get hot and sweaty, the conversation isn’t just about Janet Jackson and miniskirts.

“Oh, so you are from San Diego?” a young Kiwi woman asked an American. “Well, good on Micheal Fay. I hope he gets the cup.”

Dennis Conner can’t even win grudging words of praise in Sam Diego’s wine bar, a “California style” lounge across the street from the posh Regent Hotel in Auckland.

About the only sympathetic words for Conner concern an episode on New Zealand television when TV journalist Paul Holmes ambushed Conner and confronted him with video tape of Conner’s crude behavior at the post-America’s Cup press conference.

“San Diego does not have the corner on frustration,” explained Fay spokesman Allen Sefton, mistakenly believing that San Diegans felt especially agitated. “People here are very frustrated. What you are hearing around the country is their frustration.”

“Everybody knows about it and everybody doesn’t like Dennis Conner, and everybody doesn’t like the catamaran,” said Fay in an interview in his Auckland offices. “They follow it closely, especially here in Auckland.”

While Dennis Conner has had his share of public relations problems in the United States as the John McEnroe of the sea, Michael Fay has been blessed with ego-stroking coverage in the New Zealand press. New Zealanders feel left out down there at the bottom of the world, and they like nothing better than giving the big boys a poke. Fay is seen as a national hero who dared stand up to the Americans.

Partly, this depth of interest has been kept alive by Fay’s own public relations machine in New Zealand, which now consists mostly of Sefton, a former yachting writer.

Sefton’s job hasn’t been difficult in a sports-mad country where talk of cricket and rugby far outweigh discussions of politics. Kiwis identify themselves as sportsmen.

“You’ve got to understand,” explained John Collett on a farm in rural Hawkes Bay province. “New Zealand really has no native culture except for sport.”

And sailing’s one of the big ones. Thousands of small children begin racing sailboats in a sort of aquatic Little League by the age of 8, and nearly every pub in the country, even in inland areas, boasts a large map of the world used to chart the progress of the current Whitbread Round the World race. Two Kiwi boats are among the leaders in the marathon sail around the world.

Indeed, when the Whitrbread boats arrived in Auckland harbor, tens of thousands of people filled the streets to greet them, most staying until the early morning hours so they could see all the boats arrive.

Sailors are celebrities in New Zealand. Chris Dickson, winner of last month’s Congressional Cup races off Long Beach, has his own newspaper column. Fay’s face is more recognizable than the prime minister’s.

But as badly as the Kiwis want the cup, it’s not at all certain that the cup will get the reception in New Zealand Micheal Fay hopes. Because fair play and good sport are of such national importance in New Zealand (and New Zealand is still one place where a cricket player who tells the truth and admits he dropped the ball gets a huge round of applause), some Kiwis feel that winning a cup in the courts just wouldn’t be sporting, old chap.

In fact, there seems to be a growing movement toward accepting the cup in a kind of trust and not putting the New Zealand name on the trophy until a new series can be held and a winner selected on the water. That doesn’t jibe with Micheal Fay’s wishes. He wants the cup so badly, he’s amassing artifacts for an America’s Cup trophy room on the top floor of his office building.

Still New Zealanders were thrilled when the first court handed them the trophy. The New Zealand Herald began a regular series of articles about the cup called simply “The Defence.” The government jumped into the action with “fast track” legislation to renovate Auckland’s waterfront at a cost of $12 million. Then the appeals court took the cup away. Now they wait.

Fay has tried to keep up public morale. He has even taken a bet with his partner David Richwhite who is known to have less enthusiasm for the cup than Fay does. Fay says the court will will return the cup to the Kiwis. Richwhite has bet against it.

Regardless of which way the court decides, the Kiwi government has stuck to its plans for Auckland. According to Graeme Colman, the executive assistant to the minister of external relations and trade, a special America’s Cup task force has been established to plan for the Auckland defense. Parliament used what Colman, who was a press operative in San Diego during the sailing here, described as bi-partisan legislation to establish the group.

“There will be a new marina along the waterfront,” said Colman. “It will be built with or without the cup.”

The government has been eyeing the much-needed injection of cash a cup defense would bring to the stagnant New Zealand economy. Some have estimated that a cup series might earn $3.5 billion for the nation.

But even with all the bravado and the weight of the New Zealand government behind the cup, some are beginning to admit that the appeals court probably will not hand the cup over to the Kiwis. New Zealanders are already concocting a cover story in case they lose the legal fight.

“What can you expect from, an American court,” asked one of the businessmen at the Regent. “How would you like to be one of those judges? They can’t rule against the Americans.”

“Red, white and blue are strong colors,” said Fay. “It’s an American court, isn’t it?”

It’s a futile exercise to try to explain that there is probably very little pressure on the judges in New York who have a lot to worry about besides a sailing trophy and that the cup case is likely more of a nuisance to the judges than a lightning rod for public pressure.

San Diegans have gone on with their lives. There’s waves to catch, money to be made, the sun is out and the worries of a few wealthy sailors and posturing politicians don’t make much of a dent in the San Diego psyche.

But in New Zealand, models of past boats and rare books on cup history are sitting in Micheal Fay’s trophy room waiting to be joined by the cup. Kiwis listen with impatience for a panel of judges to tell them if they will enter the America’s Cup history books or if they will have to find another way to give the world a poke.