AMERICA’S CUP NOTEBOOK / RICH ROBERTS : Is Koch’s Skipper-Go-Round a Bum Steer?

Does Bill Koch really intend to drive his own boat in the America’s Cup?

A joke around San Diego is that just in case anyone has other ideas, Koch has had America-3’s Jayhawk in the shed recently to remove one of the steering wheels.

America’s Cup boats are so wide--18 feet--that they have two steering wheels so the helmsman can steer from either side, but Koch’s problem is that just because he owns the boat he thinks he should steer it himself.

At different times Koch has had as many as five potential world-class helmsmen on the boat. He started with Gary Jobson and Buddy Melges, whose credentials are well-known, along with the talented Bill Campbell.

He got Larry Klein, the Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, when he absorbed the Triumph America syndicate, which is why he didn’t take the widely experienced John Bertrand when Koch took over the Beach Boys team.

Later, Koch fired Klein. Insiders thought he really simply wanted Klein’s designer, Heiner Meldner, anyway.

Then he hired John Kostecki, an ’88 Olympic silver medalist. Kostecki steered two downwind legs in the only race Jayhawk won in the International America’s Cup Class World Championships in May but spent all but two races on the slower backup boat.

After that he figured he’d never get to drive much, so he quit and started planning another Olympic campaign.

Then Jobson, who put the crew together, got disenchanted and quit to go back to ESPN. Melges had back surgery and won’t be able to sail in next week’s match races against the French boat Thursday through Saturday.

Bertrand, meanwhile, is no longer available, having joined Conner’s camp. Koch now wants to talk to Peter Isler, who went to ESPN after folding his Cup campaign.

Isler said Jobson alerted him that he might leave Koch and seek to return to ESPN, but the move doesn’t alter Isler’s TV situation.

“The producers told me it wouldn’t change anything,” Isler said. “We’d just have three guys (with Jim Kelly) doing commentary. “That made me feel really good.”

So it might take a princely offer to pry Isler out of the booth and back onto a boat, especially one as uncertain as Koch’s.

And there is the question of Koch’s ability to match-race with world-class sailors, something he has never done. Does Roger Penske insist on driving his own cars at Indy?

Who knows what to make of the strange case of A.A. (Al) Constantine, who wants to defend the America’s Cup?

The Connecticut yacht broker showed up in San Diego last week and was rebuffed by the San Diego Yacht Club’s Defense Committee.

The committee, charged with mounting a successful defense, has weeded out several prospects on the basis of finances and approved four local bids, all of which except Dennis Conner folded.

Constantine, who calls his syndicate the Independence Group, has resurfaced from 1988, when his name flashed across the Cup horizon briefly after New Zealand’s Michael Fay challenged San Diego with the sub-compact aircraft carrier. Constantine offered to build a boat to beat Fay’s but was politely refused.

San Diego preferred sailing a lock with the catamaran and getting on to the glorious, multinational defense that had been written on the wind at Fremantle.

Now the Defense Committee says Constantine’s credentials are lacking.

“He didn’t offer much,” said Gene Trepte, the lawyer who chairs the committee.

Constantine said he showed them commitments of $6 million and told them he had a design ready to go into construction.

Not enough, said the committee.

Why not just let anybody sail who shows up?

Fine. “If anybody shows up at the defense trials with a legal IACC boat, they would be allowed to race,” says Tom Ehman, general manager of the America’s Cup Organizing Committee. “(But) the chances of that are zero.”

Why? Because it’s rigged that way. Along with the blessing of the Defense Committee, which is an arm of the ACOC, comes use of the licensed America’s Cup name and logo for fund-raising.

Let’s get this straight: A prospect would have trouble raising money without those rights. But first he has to show he has money.

Catch-22?

But if Constantine can do without the window-dressing, he’s welcome to race.

It makes sense that the ACOC would not turn away any prospects without reason. It has only two defenders--Conner and Koch--and challenge syndicates are dropping like flies. What if Constantine really does have the means to compete?

“I think it’s their concern that we might upstage everyone,” he said in San Diego last week. “We understand you have a lot of politics here, but squeezing out the competition is not the answer.”

Nor is talk. The ACOC and Defense Committee would like Al Constantine to do one of two things: Put up or shut up.

The saddest note for the Cup is the plight of the Yugoslav challenge, which seems about to collapse in a civil war, wooden boat and all.

The ACOC received notification this week that (a) the government of Croatia, which had succeeded the federal republic, was withdrawing its support, and (b) that the Yacht Club Galeb that sponsored the bid was dropping out.

However, the Yacoma d.d. syndicate remains alive and said it was hoping to obtain sponsorship from another club.

Ehman conceded that “chances are small” of the challenge surviving, “but we’re leaving the door open.”

Isler, while ranked sixth internationally as this country’s top competitor, had never won on the World Match-Racing circuit until last week’s Liberty Cup in New York Harbor.

He defeated France’s Bertrand Pace 2-0 in the finals.

Isler was 8-1 in the round-robin, followed by Pace and England’s Chris Law, 7-2; Japan’s Makoto Namba, 6-3; J.J. (Mrs.) Isler and America’s Kevin Mahaney, 4-5; Denmark’s Valdemar Bandolowski and Australia’s Bobby Wilmot, 3-6, Italy’s Tommaso Chieffi, 2-7, and Spain’s Pedro Campos, 1-8.