What’s the Challenge? Picking a Winner

Five years have passed since the America’s Cup had a real America’s Cup. Some things have changed and some things have stayed the same.

The challengers, who probably will take the ugly mug to some foreign land come May, did their thing for the first time Saturday.

This was long-awaited, since the defenders are having their little regatta a trois with America 3 times two and Dennis Conner. Not too exciting there. America 3 raced America 3 on Saturday, for example, and those races are about as exciting as kissing your mother-in-law.

Ah, but the challengers would be something else. Eight of them would go at it, representing seven countries.

Eight is a nice number for sporting competition. Baseball was at its best when there were eight teams in each league. The Big Eight has it over the Big Ten plus one and the Pac-10 and all those other funny number leagues.

It breaks down nicely with no byes and seven days of four races each to wrap up a round of racing. Sorry about the Russians and whatever the Yugoslavs are this week. It’s simply neater this way.

Naturally, the challengers started out protesting something those devilish New Zealanders have done. They had the audacity to use that fiberglass boat in 1987 and then really blew everyone out of the water with their Big Boat Challenge in 1988. Of course, that one backfired when Conner and Co. one-upped them with the catamaran.

This time around, the Kiwis came out with a one-meter bowsprit. This was enough to draw the ire of the other challengers, even if they didn’t really know whether it would make any difference. Simply being different is enough for these suspicious lads.

Matched with Ville de Paris, the French entry, on Saturday, New Zealand was promptly hit by a protest flag. So here it was, the first day of on-the-water umpiring for the challengers, and the Kiwis were headed for the protest room.

Should New Zealand lose, I suspect they will be on their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have developed a reputation as a rather litigous bunch.

Also reminiscent of 1987 was the fact that the Aussies, no longer having the monopoly on magic keels they enjoyed in 1983, lost. Twice. Spirit of Australia, skippered by Peter Gilmour, lost to the Italians and Challenge Australia, skippered by Phil Thompson, lost to Spain. Presumably, the Aussies did not all go out for a continental dinner.

Nothing else much could remain the same because all of the other challengers are new.

This was the first day to try to make sense of what all these people have been doing, or not doing, to get ready.

The Swedes, skippered by Gunnar Krantz, stand alone under the category of “not doing” to get ready. They put their Tre Kronor--translation: Three Crowns--into the water only four days before the racing began.

Their skipper, advised that the others had been sailing around for almost a year, remarked that it must have been kind of boring for them.

I like that attitude.

Maybe it will pay off for them. Maybe fresh will count for something.

Maybe not, at least not on Saturday.

Sailing against Nippon, the Swedes finished 3 1/2 minutes in arrears. Remember, though, that this is a long grind. These guys can improve more rapidly than the others, because they are starting from scratch. The others have worked all these months to squeeze as much as they can out of their boats.

Consequently, there is hope for this refreshing approach. Perhaps they will win it all and change the face of America’s Cup racing . . . and wipe out baseball training camps and exhibition football in the process.

Given that the Swedes have some catching up to do, and no one keels over for Australia, what could be learned from this first day?

You have been hearing this a lot lately.

Watch out for the Japanese.

And their Kiwi hired gun, Chris Dickson.

Nippon was paired with Tre Kronor in the fourth race Saturday. However, by the first mark, Nippon had passed Espana ’92 and Challenge Australia and was leading the third race as well. Maybe someone should take note that this boat was built by Yamaha Motors and take a look down below.

Indeed, Nippon had the fastest time of the day on the 20-mile course, covering the distance in 2 hours 40 minutes 26 seconds.

And now, remember how dominant Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia was in the World Championships last May?

Il Moro’s time Saturday was seventh out of the eight boats on the water. The only one slower was Spirit of Australia, which happened to be racing against the Italians.

A lesson to be learned here is that these are match races, the idea being to beat the other guys and not the clock.

That’s what had Nippon looking tough, beating three other entries . . . and the clock.