Optimism Scarce Among Conner’s Fans
Dennis Conner’s persuasion was crystal blue, but even his most ardent supporters can’t help but see white, as in a flag of surrender.
After a weekend of watching Bill Koch’s America 3 sail circles around the homeboys, folks hanging around the Embarcadero, near Conner’s Stars & Stripes base camp, are beginning to doubt whether Conner can successfully defend the America’s Cup.
“I don’t want to say he’s in trouble,” Chart House bartender Steve Sellers said Sunday. “Let’s just say, if I were a gambling man, I wouldn’t put my money on him.”
Major modifications after Round 1 of the defenders’ trials were supposed to make Stars & Stripes better in heavy winds, such as those in Sunday’s race. But Koch’s second boat, Defiant, pounded Stars & Stripes by 4 minutes 16 seconds the day after Koch’s third boat, America 3 , won by a 6:23 landslide.
Conner insisted that all his team has to do is win five races in April’s Round 4, “and we’d be in the finals, with a fresh piece of paper. . . . Even if you’re fast, if the shoe were on the other foot, you wouldn’t feel totally comfortable until the fat lady sings.”
By his own admission, Conner’s a good salesman, but is anyone buying what he’s saying?
“It’s a pity,” said Patrick Pellicioli, a flight attendant for Swiss Air and a huge Conner fan since 1980. “I thought for sure it was his day. I still hope for him, but it was evident today, his strategy was wrong.”
Said John Marc Bridevaux, a foreign exchange dealer for a Swiss bank: “I think he has not much of a chance. On that seventh leg, when he went toward the coast and lost two minutes, the tactics were all wrong.”
Bridevaux and Pellicioli are in San Diego for 10 days to watch the trials, but mostly to see Conner. Pellicioli said he would be disappointed if Conner weren’t in the Cup finals because “he’s a living legend.”
Bridevaux said he’d rather see competitive racing: “If somebody else is better, I want to see a nice race.”
Passengers disembarking Betsy, a boat that shuttles friends and sponsors of Team Dennis Conner to and from the race course, were quiet as they filtered through the Stars & Stripes gift shop Sunday, where a sales clerk said she sees no correlation between sales and the team’s performance.
Paul Dearing and his son Nick, 13, drove from Los Angeles to watch the races from Betsy. They said the mood on the boat changed as Stars & Stripes fell farther and farther behind Defiant.
“It got pretty somber out there,” Paul said. “Everyone thought the conditions would play to his talents.”
The Dearings became America’s Cup fans the same time everyone else did, “when Dennis lost it,” said Paul, who doesn’t want to see Conner lose another. “I’m still rooting for him. My intellect says (he won’t win), but my emotions say to still cheer him on.”
Like father, like son. Nick’s in Conner’s corner as well: “It would be unfortunate to have an America’s Cup without him.”
But Paul Dearing noticed something else. He said it looked as if the crew was having difficulty with routine sail changes.
“You could tell, on the turns mainly, they weren’t handling the sails as crisply as in the past,” he said. “They seemed slow, sloppy.”
Stars & Stripes tactician Tom Whidden said they tried new sail trims because of the boat’s new configurations, but “we’re not even sure at the end we had it right. . . . We probably still have some things to learn about making it go fast.”
Better learn fast. Your fans, and the thermostat at the Chart House, are waiting.
“When they lose,” Sellers said, “it’s like a colder climate in here. It’s quieter.”
