AMERICA’S CUP ’92 : Italians Lower Boom on Kiwi Challenge : Cayard Guides Il Moro into Final; America 3 Puts Conner in a Corner

The boys who “would rather die than lose” have gone quietly from the America’s Cup with a bitter sense of both.

Those were Sir Michael Fay’s words of resolve last winter, but after Il Moro di Venezia skipper Paul Cayard beat New Zealand’s sailors into submission with their bowsprit, they went like lambs to four straight losses.

The Italians won easily by 1 minute 33 seconds Thursday to claim the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger trials, 5-3, and await the winner of the defender finals for the best-of-seven Cup match starting May 9.

Once again, America 3’s Bill Koch is casting a tall wind shadow over Dennis Conner, dispatching Stars & Stripes by 1:43 to go up 6-4 as the winds grew to the 14 knots where his boat comes to life. The Cubens can wrap it up with a victory today, Saturday or Sunday--meaning, as Conner likes to say, “you don’t need to be a rocket scientist” to figure out that he now needs to win three in a row.

Koch had said, should he advance, that he would prefer to race against Il Moro.

“I’m quite impressed with the Italian camp,” he said. “I’ve raced against Paul Cayard and (syndicate boss) Raul Gardini a number of years (on the maxi-boat circuit). They’re fierce competitors. I’d prefer them so I could race against Raul Gardini.”

Stars & Stripes won three straight in light winds of 5 or 6 knots and flat seas but couldn’t compete when a fresh breeze blew up a stiff chop Thursday.

“We’ve had enough of these hurricane-force winds,” Conner joked.

Conner and his crew are sailing their old boat as well as they can, and the crew isn’t tight. Conner allowed a half-dozen reporters to ride out on the boat with him before Thursday’s race, letting them take pictures and steer under sail. Such a gesture is unprecedented, at least in this Cup.

It’s just that Koch is overpowering them with money and technology.

But New Zealand’s sudden collapse was puzzling. The effort had four boats conceived by Bruce Farr, arguably the world’s top designer; some of the world’s best sailors, every other advantage Fay’s money could buy and, most of all, a mission.

Nippon skipper Chris Dickson, who sailed for Fay at Fremantle in 1986-87, said on ESPN, “This is a very bad day for New Zealand, (which) has had its own economic problems the last three years. It’s a very small country and a lot of hopes have been riding on the America’s Cup. Those hopes have been dashed today.”

Did the jury ruling that stripped New Zealand of its fourth victory in the challenger finals take the heart out of the Kiwis?

They weren’t the same afterward. Until then they were 8-3 against Il Moro, including a loss for touching a finishing mark, and 29-6 overall, with Il Moro 22-13.

The crash was reminiscent of ’87 when Chris Dickson sailed the Kiwis’ fiberglass 12-meter into the challenger finals with a record of 37-1 and then ran aground on a reef called Stars & Stripes, losing by 4-1.

One reason their campaign unraveled was apparent: the Italians’ suddenly solid sailing.

“We peaked,” Cayard said. “This is the highest level of performance we’ve reached.”

But Cayard also recognized that the Kiwis had lost their edge when they switched skippers Wednesday from Rod Davis, his old friend, to Russell Coutts, the world’s top-ranked match racer.

“I read it as being a major weakness in their program,” Cayard said. “The program was crumbling when that happened.”

Davis’ tactician, David Barnes, said, “My personal opinion is we would have been better with Russell at the start, then Rod to steer after that. Looking back, maybe (the afterguard change) wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Cayard suspected that his persistent harangue on the bowsprit issue also took a toll.

“Things can pile up on you in a situation like that,” he said. “They weren’t as fast relative to us as they thought they were gonna be. We started to sail better. The bowsprit issue came of age. They made a few mistakes. That disturbed ‘em for sure.”

The skipper switch didn’t make any difference--and for Davis, the American-born Kiwi, the ending was a twisted blessing. The stigma will not be his alone.

Thursday morning New Zealand appealed to the race committee to initiate a hearing under Rule 75, hoping to get the Italians disqualified for “a gross breach of good manners and sportsmanship”--as Il Moro boss Raul Gardini had demanded New Zealand’s ouster a few days earlier.

Later, when Gardini apologized, Fay withdrew the protest, they shook hands and made up, and Fay withdrew to ponder his team’s breakdown.

Davis said credit should be given to Il Moro.

“They lifted their program, significantly,” Davis said. “We didn’t match it. It’s not a problem that the New Zealand team faltered.”

Coutts’ name card was in place before the post-race press conference, but he chose not to show, leaving Davis to face Il Moro and reporters with Fay and team manager Peter Blake.

Fay said, “We threw everything we could at the America’s Cup and just a little more. It has been a long, long campaign. Sixty percent of our people have been all the way through those eight years.”

He wasn’t sure he’ll try another.

“I don’t think as a team we could be any stronger,” Fay said.

But he’ll think about it.

“With the Cup in Europe, with Il Moro successful, to go to the other side of the world on the base of 3 million people I think, as Australia commented, it would see difficulty in challenging in the future. It’s sometimes a question of where the Cup goes.”

Blake said, “We are a tiny country in such powerful company. We could not have done more.”