The Showdown That Doesn’t Show Up : America’s Cup: The upstarts shove aside the rivalry that had developed between Dennis Conner and Sir Michael Fay.
A couple of funny things happened to Dennis Conner and Sir Michael Fay on their way to their showdown for the America’s Cup.
The rivalry that had been building on insults and lawsuits through three campaigns over the last five years evaporated last week when two multimillionaire upstarts, Bill Koch and Raul Gardini, sailed to the best-of-seven match starting Saturday.
Conner brought the Cup to San Diego. Fay’s vision led to the creation of the new International America’s Cup Class that lent a grander flavor to the competition. But the two men most responsible for the substance of this event will be standing on the dock.
Fay told Gardini last week, with sad irony: “I knew a long time ago it was going to be a red boat that would win the next America’s Cup.”
Fay meant his, from New Zealand. Instead, it might be Gardini’s, Il Moro di Venezia from Italy.
Conner probably saw the inevitable coming much earlier, when he realized he wouldn’t have a second boat to remain apace of Koch’s America 3 colossus in the rapid development in the new class. Conner was working on his ’95 Cup campaign long before Koch eliminated him from this one, 7-4.
Conner flew to New York Sunday night to continue laying the groundwork for his future sailing efforts to be based out of the USA Yacht Club at the upscale North Cove Marina in New York City.
While Conner’s operations will include the ‘93-94 Whitbread Race, the Formula One World Yachting Grand Prix circuit for 52 1/2-footers and defense of his Etchells class world championship on Long Island sound next September, the overriding thrust is to maintain a high profile for the next America’s Cup.
San Diego won’t like the implications. The USA Yacht Club is more of a promotional and marketing arm for Conner’s business--understand, he is in the America’s Cup business-- than someplace for sailors to gather socially.
The USAYC can’t challenge for the Cup unless the Cup leaves the San Diego Yacht Club for a club in another country.
The crunch, then, is that Conner’s interests would be better served if Il Moro di Venezia won, so he could try to bring the Cup back, not to San Diego but to the USAYC.
And Dennis Conner.
Conner’s aim is no different from what Fay would have realized or Gardini has in mind: to wrest virtual personal control of the world’s oldest sporting trophy and sailing’s greatest prize. With the freedom of mobility, unchained from any yacht club’s trophy case, cities around the world would bid for the Cup as they do for the Olympics. The financial potential would be enormous.
So is Conner rooting for Italy?
Do you think he’d admit it if he were?
Gardini, asked after winning the defender finals whether he would indeed defend the Cup in Venice, was vague.
“We will have the duty to defend the Cup as Europeans and not as Italians,” Gardini said.
Fay would have defended in Auckland, where the event would have been presented and received with considerably more enthusiasm than it has been in San Diego. But now Fay isn’t sure he’ll ever try again.
“We’ve been campaigning for all but three months of the past eight years,” he said.
He sounded weary of the fight.
As Fay alluded, a red boat has never won the America’s Cup. The last one that tried was the much-maligned Liberty, which Conner kicked and shoved to a seventh race with the wing-keeled Australia II at Newport, R.I., in ’83 before losing, 4-3.
Nobody knows as well as Conner how hard it is to win the Cup with a slower boat, a conviction reinforced by his loss to Koch’s younger, strong America 3 in the defender trials last week.
In the challenger finals, a slow boat wasn’t New Zealand’s problem. The Kiwis will be a long time sorting out what the problem was--how they went from a 4-1 lead to a 5-3 loss in the finals.
Right now they aren’t talking. Fay, one report says, told the sailors not to talk to the media, and all team manager Peter Blake would say Sunday was that he still had nothing to say. They especially won’t talk about the futile skipper switch from Rod Davis to Russell Coutts the last two days.
But they plan to pull out of Coronado Thursday, and there might be more persistent questioning awaiting them at home.
Chris Dickson, the Kiwi who sailed here for the Nippon Challenge, said: “I think there’s got to be a lot of questions asked in the Kiwi camp. The boat is very, very fast. To be on top all the way through and to crumble at the end is very disappointing to the team, and they’re looking at why this happened.”
So, after 163 races among 10 boats over 3 1/2 months, it comes down to two. Which is faster? Nobody knows for sure.
A few weeks ago Koch, who will defend the America’s Cup, accused the challengers of surreptitiously shortening their race course so their times would look better than the defenders’.
The challengers just smiled.
It was a silly issue, because sailboats can’t be reliably compared by clocking them around a track like Indy cars, especially when they’re running on different tracks, as the two sides were. There are too many variables in wind, current, waves and tactics.
But a satellite navigation system has verified that the courses used in the finals last week were both the regulation 20.03 nautical miles, within 30 meters of each other.
That at least offers a yardstick to compare the boats’ performances on their adjacent courses only for the last four race days, when both boats presumably were at their best, and the winds averaged out identically on the two courses.
The conclusions?
Despite losing two of those races to Stars & Stripes, America 3 was faster around the course by an average of 1 minute 32 seconds, but Il Moro was faster on more legs, 18-4, with an 8-4 edges on reaches (across the wind) and 7-5 on upwind legs. America 3 was faster downwind, 5-3.
America 3 should be faster. The defenders had a major, built-in advantage over the challengers by not having to commit the boats they would race until five days before the Cup match. That’s today.
The challengers had to declare their entries last January, before their trials started. Was that fair?
The defenders, who made up the rules, said, sure, because the challengers had them outnumbered, eight to two--which wasn’t the challengers’ fault and was somewhat irrelevant. In almost any other sporting competition, you make up the rules, then count the entries.
So Koch had a 3 1/2-month edge on Il Moro going in. If the foreigners hadn’t had that early deadline, Gardini might not have stopped at five boats but could have had his Tencara shipyard stamping out IACC boats like Liberty ships in World War II. Or, he certainly would have waited longer to commit his fifth.
Lacking funds, Conner wasn’t able to take advantage of the extra time. He built only one boat, more than a year ago--USA 11.
Koch, despite seemingly unlimited resources--$65 million and counting--didn’t exploit the rules to the limit, either, introducing his third boat--America 3, USA 23--in February and his fourth--Kanza, USA 28--in March.
America 3 apparently was his best. One troubling point, though, is that it should have been a whole lot faster than Stars & Stripes.
Credit Conner, his crew and his resourceful design team for getting Stars & Stripes as far as they did--not only into the finals but tied after eight races.
If he and Fay didn’t get it on this time, well, maybe another place, another time.
How They Compare
APRIL 26
WINDS: 5-9-6 KNOTS. SWELL: 2 FEET
Il Moro America3 UPWIND 33:59 34:17 27:04 25:46 31:54 36:11 DOWNWIND 23:47 23:58 24:46 25:08 REACHES 8:46 8:51 13:08 13:30 8:54 9:51 TOTALS 2:52:20 2:57:36
Il Moro def. New Zealand, 43 seconds; Stars & Stripes def. America 3, 1:28.
APRIL 28
WINDS: 5-8-7 KNOTS. SWELL: 2 FEET
Il Moro America3 UPWIND 37:26 42:40 35:54 28:05 29:12 28:51 DOWNWIND 27:55 24:20 22:00 19:26 REACHES 10:31 9:03 14:39 14:33 12:32 9:19 TOTALS 3:10:14 2:56:22
Il Moro def. New Zealand, 53 seconds; Stars & Stripes def. America 3, 1:47.
APRIL 29
WINDS: 6-8-9 KNOTS. SWELL: 1 FOOT
Il Moro America3 UPWIND 31:48 32:29 29:49 29:12 26:16 27:08 DOWNWIND 24:40 28:42 18:12 16:34 REACHES 8:49 8:51 12:53 13:24 8:59 9:14 TOTALS 2:41:29 2:45:39
Il Moro def. New Zealand, 20 seconds; America 3 def. Stars & Stripes, 1:08.
APRIL 30
WINDS: 11-12-14 KNOTS. SWELL: 3 FEET
Il Moro America3 UPWIND 30:10 30:32 25:44 23:44 23:45 23:58 DOWNWIND 22:00 21:07 16:21 16:02 REACHES 8:02 8:14 12:09 12:17 8:30 8:02 TOTALS 2:26:41 2:23:59
Il Moro def. New Zealand, 1:33; America 3 def. Stars & Stripes, 1:43.
NOTE: Races sailed on adjacent courses; wind strength given for successive upwind legs; times in hours, minutes, seconds.