AMERICA’S CUP ’92 : Technological Arsenal Builds Koch’s Aplomb : Defenders: As third round begins, he is increasingly confident he will beat Conner.
Bill Koch, steering a course between arrogance and condescension, will line up Dennis Conner for another torpedo when the third round of the America’s Cup defender trial trials starts today.
With his bottomless bank account, higher technology and unbridled espionage, Koch is waging sailing’s version of the Persian Gulf War not only to blow Conner away but to overwhelm whichever challenger awaits in May.
He’s already taken them on with his electronic intelligence operations and rejected the complaints of Il Moro di Venezia skipper Paul Cayard on Monday.
“Paul’s under a great deal of pressure and a great deal of frustration,” Koch said. “I think he’s just whining.”
As for Conner, who was sitting alongside at the time, Koch said, “We’re looking forward to being very competitive with Dennis. He’s a formidable opponent and we’re very proud to be sailing against him.”
A nice tribute to the man who brought the Cup back to the U.S. and to San Diego with his victory over the Australians at Fremantle in 1987, but perhaps a polite prelude to what seems inevitable.
Entering the third round, Conner’s Stars & Stripes is 5-7 with seven points through the first two rounds, compared to Koch’s third boat, America 3(USA 23), with 16 points, and Koch’s older boat, Defiant, with 4. Victories count four points in this round, which will have each boat racing each of the others four times instead of three.
Conner hasn’t even beaten USA 23, let alone the fourth boat Koch will have later this month. Koch characterized the importance of a multi-boat development program.
“Jayhawk felt like a dog,” Koch said of his first boat. “Defiant felt like a truck. Twenty-three feels like a beautiful woman.”
Offstage, Koch repeated his earlier beliefs that Conner will have no second boat and is all but a dead duck without one. He can tweak only so much more speed out of Stars & Stripes, the oldest International America’s Cup Class boat still racing.
“We’re fairly confident it’s going to be hard for him to catch up to 23.” Koch said. “(All) he can do is change his keel or his mast or his rudder or his sail.
“We’ve gone around and checked with every boat builder, every supplier of material and every keel builder. We can’t find a boat being built anywhere.
“Everything about Dennis sandbagging, cards up his sleeve and all that is kind of a mystique that has grown way out of proportion. Dennis wants to win, and if he could he’d be beating up on us pretty badly now.”
Conner indicated all he had up his sleeve was an arm grasping at straws.
“We thought we had a little cat in the box that we played last time--the tandem keel idea,” he said. “That didn’t work, and you’re not gonna see anything like that. We’re (back to) trying to optimize our boat in a standard, conventional fashion.”
Koch’s program is something more than standard and conventional. Last weekend he unveiled a new sail material involving liquid crystals, carbon-fiber and a secret polymer process--things anyone with his three degrees from MIT would understand.
“The nice thing about liquid crystals is if you break it, the liquid won’t pour out,” Koch said. ‘
Thank Heaven. The broken sewage pipe off Point Loma is already causing enough concern.
Koch also said, “The crystals will align with stresses that are put on (the sail).”
How they align with the stresses Koch is putting in the opposition with his spy operations is another matter.
Now, to go with Guzzini, an enclosed power boat crammed with electronic gear, America 3 has a utility truck similarly equipped. The truck--son of Guzzini?--is parked high up on a hill overlooking the race courses, and speculation is that the two work together in some triangulation scheme to track the performance of rivals’ boats.
“We’re trying to get our Guzzini as close to our competitors as possible to measure their performance,” Koch said. “They don’t seem to like that.”
Koch’s helmsman, Buddy Melges, defended the practice.
“Everything we’re doing is completely legit,” he said. “It’s a technology race. If they haven’t done it electronically as we have, that’s their problem.”
Koch: “We take high-resolution pictures from way up in the air and then have a computer analyze it. You can’t stop or police that. It’s all part of the game.
“Now, sure, I think it’s unethical and illegal to plant moles in other people’s organizations, which the challengers have done to one another and tried to do to us. It’s illegal to break and enter. It’s illegal to try to bribe people to get plans for boats.”
Conner low-keyed his comments. “There’s a lot of finger-pointing at Bill,” he said, “but I haven’t seen or heard of any hard evidence that he’s gone beyond the rules here.”
Koch said, “We would welcome a Rule C challenge from either the Italians or the Japanese.”
He referred to Rule C of sailing’s Fundamental Rules: “A yacht, her owner and crew shall compete only by sailing, using their speed and skill . . . in accordance with the recognized principles of fair play and sportsmanship.”
John Bertrand, Stars & Stripes’ alternate helmsman, used that rule to overturn Russ Silvestri’s victory in the ’84 U.S. Olympic trials in the Finn class.
Koch said, “They’ve been complaining about us for some time. They have a mechanism for challenging us. Fine, let ‘em put their money where their mouth is.”
Koch also said, “The amount of money involved in these boats is obscene and absurd, and it’s discouraging international competition and it’s really hurting the America’s Cup.”
But Koch admits to spending $55 million on his campaign, including nearly $40 million of his own fortune--more, personally than anybody.
“I’m the only guy here who’s putting up his own money,” Koch said. “Maybe I’m a fool, maybe I’m a genius, but I’m doing it.”
He blamed the designers of the new IACC class “who wanted an extremely expensive boat in order to keep a lot of competitors out.”
Koch thinks it’s a shame that the Australians, for one, with their long America’s Cup tradition, are not in the running this time.
“They realize that with a one-boat program you really can’t be competitive in this high-technology game,” Koch said.
Conner interjected, “Time will tell.”
Koch, realizing his gaffe, quickly added, “I would qualify my remark by saying that Dennis is unique. If Dennis were in the challenger fleet, he’d be in the top four.”
Among the defenders, Conner is in the top two, but that’s hardly good enough.
