AMERICA’S CUP : 1992 Cup Came, Saw, Vanished

It’s over?

Already?

Wasn’t it only yesterday that Dennis Conner and Bill Koch took their toys out to the Pacific for the start of America’s Cup ‘92?

Is that all there is?

Amazingly, four months and two days passed between the start of this regatta and 2:52 p.m. Saturday, when America 3 completed its rather rapid dismissal of Il Moro di Venezia with a ho-hum 44-second victory.

It seemed like it took forever . . . and it seemed like it was over almost before it started.

It was like waiting for Santa Claus for so interminably long and then he’s come and gone before you know it.

This was a nice sporting event that never quite captured the fancy of the multitudes hereabouts. For most of the four months, the electricity generated by the event was hardly enough to fire up a smoke detector. Interest picked up just in time for the Italians to say goodby.

Bill Koch and his America 3 crew dispatched Il Moro with calm efficiency. With the exception of that three-second loss last Sunday, America 3 was in total charge. Its dominance was enough to cure insomnia, yet its average margin of victory--50.6 seconds--was the closest in the 141-year history of Cup finals. A rout, apparently, is when the trailing boat does not finish the same day.

There was no dancing in the streets here to celebrate the fact that the Cup was retained, though the San Diego Yacht Club dock was packed with well-wishers greeting the arrival of the victorious yacht and its crew. Of course, the SDYC had a stake in retaining the Cup. Had A3 let it escape to Venice, it might have suffered the horror of having to borrow Koch’s “Roseanne” sculpture to occupy the pedestal inside its front door.

There were no reports whether there was dancing in the streets in either Wichita, Kan., Koch’s birthplace, or Zenda, Wis., co-skipper Buddy Melges’ hometown. There was no confirmation whether Zenda even has streets or, for that matter, if there really is a Zenda.

The only confirmed report Saturday was that France and Spain already have re-upped with challenges for America’s Cup ’95.

These challengers are really gluttons for punishment. U.S. yachts have now won 27 of 28 America’s Cup regattas . . . and 89 out of 101 races. Challenging for America’s Cup is like walking into a cannibal village and volunteering to be dinner.

Yet the challengers are the first into the fray. Many more will undoubtedly follow, though hardly the numbers you will hear tossed about in the next few weeks.

Remarkably, the defenders seem to have the most trouble putting multiple syndicates together. You know Dennis Conner will find a way, but Koch is hedging because of the expense involved. He took a $64-million bath to earn that splash in front of the SDYC Saturday. Someone might suggest to him he can find more economic quarters than a $30,000-a-month townhouse. I’ll rent him my spare bedroom for a mere 10th of that, but only if he leaves his statues home.

As bizarre as Koch’s taste in art might have been, he ran a clean ship. That might have been a key to A3’s speed. It was not weighed down by sponsors’ logos. None of Koch’s boats were. His were the only yachts in the entire regatta that did not have sails sponsored by one corporation, a hull by another and, heaven knows, a running backstay by yet another.

It was not that Koch was above accepting help, except he had donors rather than sponsors. Look for your next Form 1040 to have a box you can check if you want to donate $1 to the America 3 Foundation.

Koch has listed a number of ways to make the 1995 event more economical, but he has not come up with any ways to make it a more compelling event for the community.

Most importantly, this nice little regatta has to be put in perspective. That’s what it is. A nice little regatta that happens to attract sailors from all over the world.

Forget all this jiggling with numbers that fall under the heading of financial impact.

When was it that we started to measure sporting events by how many dollar bills they cause to be passed from a bellhop to a dry cleaner to a doughnut shop to SDG&E;, or wherever they might next land? That America’s Cup ’92 measured up to its billing as a sporting event was constantly overshadowed by how disappointing it was in terms of financial impact.

Now, one more piece of advice on 1995.

Get this event out of San Diego.

No, not to Il Moro’s Venice . . . not even California’s Morro Bay.

San Diego is too big. It sprawls over 319 miles and two bays. There is no way to concentrate enthusiasm.

Put the darn thing in Coronado. You’d get the small town atmosphere that made Newport, R.I., and Fremantle, Australia, so special. There would be dancing in the streets, not just after the next U.S. victory but throughout the regatta.

Of course, time would pass even faster if it was too much fun.

And maybe you could earmark a nickel from each toll crossing to either Bill Koch’s defense effort . . . or his rent.