AMERICA’S CUP : COMMENTARY : To Cayard, Koch a Winner Only on Water

When Bill Koch wants to make a point, he often starts out, “There’s a saying. . . . “

Koch should listen to the one about the true measure of a man being how he is regarded by his peers.

“I don’t see a great deal as a sportsman or a sailor on his behalf,” Paul Cayard said Sunday, a day after Koch’s America 3 had defeated his Il Moro di Venezia for the America’s Cup. “He’s not a peer of mine. I have nothing in common with the guy.”

To avoid embarrassing his boss, Raul Gardini, or the Italian syndicate, Cayard has been grinning, posing and shaking hands with Koch at public and media meetings the past two weeks, but it hasn’t been easy. Sunday’s award ceremony at the San Diego Yacht Club was about all he could take.

“Even today, he just kept going on and on,” Cayard said. “He’s up there saying, ‘I’m paying most of the bills, so I’m gonna do it any way I damn well please.’ I was translating Bill’s speech for Mr. Gardini and I told him, ‘So this guy’s opinion is that, if you have a lot of money, you can do whatever you want.’

“What does that mean about the man? So he’s got money. How’d he get his money--sued his brothers? (Koch’s portion of an inherited business was bought out by brothers during a series of lawsuits). How would he be if he didn’t have money?”

Earlier, while translating Gardini’s remarks on the dais, Cayard choked up when Gardini talked about Italians working with Americans in a successful campaign. Unable to speak for a moment, Cayard fell into an embrace with Gardini--hardly the image of the American mercenary with “the Italian green card” that Koch portrayed two weeks ago.

Cayard, 32, has been particularly disturbed by Koch’s remarks about 62-year-old helmsman, Buddy Melges, one of Cayard’s boyhood idols.

“The way he handles Buddy . . . it’s ridiculous,” Cayard said. “I told Buddy today, ‘Man, you must have rewritten the definition of the phrase hang in there. ‘ You listen to the (on-board microphone) on the boat and there’s Bill Koch trying to tell Buddy to ‘don’t look back.’ Here’s a guy that’s won an Olympic gold medal and the Star worlds twice, and he needs Bill Koch to tell him where to look?

“Buddy probably could only have done it at his age and with his maturity. A guy like myself or anybody wouldn’t be able to take that.”

One of Cayard’s first encounters with Koch was four years ago when Cayard had just won the maxi world championships for Gardini’s Il Moro team at San Francisco.

“This guy came up to me at the end of the last race, after we’d raced 15 races all year long, and said, ‘Well, you know your rating certificate is an Italian one, so it’s not right and you basically have been cheating all year.’

“I said, ‘Bill, the way that’s handled in this sport is if you have a problem with our rating certificate, you question it before or during the regatta. You don’t come up to a guy after he’s won a world championship and say, ‘You’ve got something wrong.’ ”

Bill Koch has won the America’s Cup, and he still doesn’t get it. Every other skipper will leave San Diego with more dignity--especially Melges, who deserves a special award for enduring Koch’s ridicule and slights for the sake of the sailing team. None need apologize for their comments or actions, as Koch seemed to be doing a lot the past couple of weeks.

Koch said Sunday, “People ask me a lot of times, ‘Why are you, Bill Koch, an amateur sailor, on the boat? You’re not even in Paul Cayard’s league.’

“I’ll be obnoxious and say I’m good enough to be on (the boat)--three seconds in the world championships, two world championships in the maxis, driving 75% of the time.”

It’s that attitude that makes this defeat for Cayard harder to swallow than most.

“Exactly,” Cayard said. “This guy is gonna be representing the sport around the world for the next three years, and I’m a little concerned about it.”

Koch’s jingoism about American technology may not sell well overseas. Montedison’s technology on behalf of Il Moro wasn’t too bad, either.

Cayard said, “This last week I’ve gotten letters from big U.S. corporations supporting me. One came from some big firm up in the Silicone Valley (and) said, ‘Mr. Koch should realize that America is built on foreigners’ technology. NASA is foreigners. All these computer companies up here are foreigners.’

“The funny thing this morning was that when (America 3 technical coordinator Vince) Moeyersoms was talking up there, you could hear his Dutch accent so strong you wondered, ‘What country’s this guy from?’

“There (Koch) is making a hard-line stand about nationality and he’s got a big mix like everybody else does.”

Sunday Koch passed out America 3 “honorary membership” pins to certain people with whom he’d had differences over the past few months, including Gardini and Cayard. He said he hoped someday he could count Cayard as a friend. Probably not soon.

“This whole week was a total flip-flop for the guy,” Cayard said. “It started at the first press conference. . . . ‘We’re your friends, we didn’t do this or that.’ Words are far too easy. The guy’s record is what counts.”