Top Officials Leave Soviet Syndicate : America’s Cup: Age of Russia’s bid apparently in shambles.

The Soviet Union’s first America’s Cup bid, already split into rival camps and beset by financial and political problems, apparently collapsed Thursday when three key principals resigned from the Age of Russia Syndicate, based in St. Petersburg.

Skipper Guram Biganishvili said he was withdrawing because of personal reasons and was joined by Doug Smith of San Diego, the managing director of U.S. operations, and Sergei Savchenko, the chief of protocol and director of marketing.

There is another group that adopted the syndicate’s former Red Star Syndicate name and announced a separate campaign in Estonia, after the aborted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and the secession of that republic. But prospects of that group were viewed as dim.

The original syndicate had built an aluminum boat for training and shipped it to the Baltic seaport of Tallinn in Estonia. But it has never sailed because of incomplete hardware and payments owed the Energia space plant that built it.

Aluminum is not an acceptable material for the new International America’s Cup Class boats, but Energia also was building a carbon fiber boat that was 70% complete about three weeks ago.

The Estonia group also had started a carbon fiber boat, but it was believed to be in early stages, with little chance of being completed and delivered to San Diego before the challenger trials start Jan. 25.

Smith, a marine insurance agent and member of the San Diego Yacht Club, had represented the Soviets for two years but was as surprised as anyone when the new syndicate emerged last month. He had no immediate comment on Thursday’s resignations.

On the U.S. front, Smith’s greatest battle had been to obtain permission from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard for the Russians to sail in San Diego Bay. Permission was finally granted the day the coup broke, but the Russians still were to be prohibited from having a base in the bay and probably would have wound up in Mission Bay, with the Nippon, French, Swedish and Australian syndicates.

Smith was to meet this morning with Stan Reid, chairman of the Challenger of Record Committee, to inform him of the latest developments. Reid had said earlier Thursday that the CORC would not permit separate entries from Russian and Estonia, and that the America’s Cup Organizing Committee would have to make a choice.

If there is no Soviet entry, the number of challengers will be reduced to nine from eight countries, with Croatia’s prospects also appearing bleak.

Several challengers will stage an exhibition race Nov. 21, the Challenger of Record Committee. The “Espana Exhibition Cup” will be sailed on San Diego Bay.

Approximately seven International America’s Cup Class yachts will race around an 11-mile course.

Syndicates expected to enter include the New Zealand Challenge, Italy’s Il Moro de Venezia, Desafio Copa America of Spain, France America, Nippon Challenge and Challenge Australia.

The event was the brainchild of the Spanish syndicate, disappointed when fellow challengers nixed a planned exhibition between it and Team Dennis Conner. Ernie Taylor, the Challenger of Record Committee’s executive director, said there will be no competition between challengers and defenders at any time before the May 9, 1992, America’s Cup final.