SAILING / AMERICA’S CUP CLASS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP : Skippers Get Peek at Competition 8 Months Ahead of Time
In what sporting event do the competitors show up a year in advance?
Only in the America’s Cup.
When do some of the world’s richest men neglect their businesses and sometimes go to court to fight for 132 ounces of silver?
Only in the America’s Cup.
The series of sailboat races starting today is billed as the first International America’s Cup Class World Championship. In reality it is a dress rehearsal for the spectacle this city hopes to achieve starting next January and a tryout for the boats and crews.
There will be nine boats from six countries, with one star: the man who has won, lost and won the last three America’s Cups since 1980, then defended with a catamaran against a mini-aircraft carrier from New Zealand in ’88.
Dennis Conner finished a creditable third in two practice races Wednesday, then remained in port for the last one Thursday when forecasts called for winds too strong for a team that has only one boat, one mast and one mainsail.
Winning the regatta isn’t the point here.
The point for Conner, he says, is “to try to learn as much as we can about the other boats and to give up as little (information) about our boat as we can.”
The fleet also includes the Nippon Challenge, with skipper Chris Dickson from New Zealand; two boats from Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia, with American skippers Paul Cayard and John Kolius; and New Zealand’s boat, with American Rod Davis serving as an alternate skipper with David Barnes and Russell Coutts.
Marc Pajot is skipper of Ville de Paris, the French entry. Pedro Campos and Antonio Gorostegui sail for Spain on a boat borrowed from New Zealand, and two boats are entered by Bill Koch, who heads the only other defense syndicate besides Conner’s.
Koch will steer the newest one and Buddy Melges will be at the helm of the other.
They will sail one fleet race each of the next five days around the new Cup course, which is a 21.2-mile maze of eight legs upwind, downwind and across the wind.
No racing is scheduled next Thursday, followed by match-racing sail-offs among the top four survivors Friday and Saturday.
Nippon performed best in the three practice races, followed closely by Il Moro and New Zealand.