Record 20 File to Challenge for Cup
A record 20 syndicates representing 15 foreign nations have filed challenges to the San Diego Yacht Club for the 1992 America’s Cup, it was announced Sunday.
The list of challengers was released by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee shortly after a midnight deadline passed Saturday for foreign syndicates to file a $25,000 entry fee.
The list includes some familiar names. Among them are the Royal Perth Yacht Club of Australia, whose victory in 1983 in Newport, R.I., ended America’s 132-year hold on the Cup. Also on the list is Michael Fay’s Mercury Bay Boat Club of New Zealand, whose 1988 challenge in a 133-foot monohull against a Dennis Conner-captained catamaran failed on the water and in the courts.
“This is a huge increase in the international scope of the event,” Tom Ehman, general manager of the ACOC, said in a news release. “It’s a sign of the growing global interest in the Cup that we have more than twice the number of countries that raced in Australia.”
A record 13 challengers, representing six countries, sailed in the last open America’s Cup competition in 1987 off Fremantle, Australia. Conner, whose 12-meter yacht Liberty lost the Cup to Australia in Newport, regained the Cup that year.
Australia and England are the most numerous challengers, with three entries each. Eight countries are making their first America’s Cup challenge: Denmark, Germany, Japan, Scotland, the Soviet Union, Spain, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.
Japan has two challenge syndicates, and the Soviet Union, which already has an entry from the Odessa Arcadia Racing Yacht Club, might add a second group. The Leningrad Yacht Club has received a 14-day extension of the deadline for the $25,000 entry fee from the SDYC but also must gain permission for the extension from the challenger group. The challengers are meeting Thursday and Friday in San Diego.
Other veteran Cup countries filling challengers included Canada, France, Italy and Sweden.
The challenger deadline was set 30 days after a New York Court of Appeals ruling April 26 affirmed a lower court ruling upholding as legal the SDYC’s 1988 defense of the Cup against Fay’s group.
The challenger trials for the 1992 Cup are to begin in January, 1992, in a new 75-foot class of yachts known as the International America’s Cup Class. The winner of the series of challenger races will go on to meet the winner of the defender selection races in a best-of-seven final in May, 1992.
The defender boat also will be selected in a series of trials early in 1992 off San Diego. Nine race syndicates, including one by Conner, have announced their intention to compete in the defender trials.