AMERICA’S CUP UPDATE : NOTEBOOK : Kansas Newspaper Keeping An Eagle Eye on Cup, Koch

Once the Wings finished the Major Soccer League season, what was a Wichita (Kan.) newspaper’s sports department to do?

Send a reporter to the America’s Cup, that’s what. Especially when the skipper of what looks to be the winning boat is a native son of the city.

Fred Mann, columnist for the Wichita Eagle--it’s the state’s largest paper with a circulation of 300,000 on Sundays--arrived in San Diego on Thursday to write columns daily on a regatta, something he had never done in his 16 years at the Eagle.

Normally, yachting plays about as well in Wichita as it does in Peoria, but with America 3syndicate head Bill Koch’s Wichita roots, this was one race the paper couldn’t ingore.

“There’s some interest in Koch there,” Mann said. “That and we had some extra travel money once the Wings were eliminated from the playoffs.”

Mann said the idea of sailing in Kansas may seem a preposterous to most, but there is some good sailing to be done on several of its man-made lakes.

“The winds in Kansas are incredible,” he said. “Bill’s sailed there, and Buddy (Melges) has too.”

When the America’s Cup trials began in January, Mann said the Eagle ran the results in agate form, small type listing results only. As the rounds went on, the paper started printing two or three paragraphs of Cup copy in its sports roundups.

The paper has run a few features on Koch, but mostly in the business section. Once his affection for yachting grew, the sports department took note.

“The Kochs are a big story in Kansas. It’s a very interesting family,” Mann said. “But most of that interest has been with Bill’s brothers. Our interest in Bill has coincided with his America’s Cup efforts.”

Another reason Koch’s name has resurfaced in the Eagle is an effort on his part to re-establish his Kansas roots--Koch now resides in Florida.

“Bill’s always been on the outside,” Mann said. “But lately he’s been trying to get to know us, and we’ve been trying to get to know him.”

In an effort to familiarize Kansans with him, Mann said Koch recently invited representatives of the Eagle and the local television and radio stations to come to San Diego, on his tab, to watch the Cup finals.

“Before, people didn’t know much about him, they thought of him as a little eccentric, a little like a Thurston B. Howell. It may have been unfair, but that was all we knew about him. Now, I think people have a little more respect for him.”

A day after Il Moro di Venezia lost the America’s Cup to America 3, Steve Erickson, the Italians’ sailing coach and Paul Cayard’s Star crew, watched boats glide through the calm waters of San Diego Bay and looked to the sky.

“Oh course, there’s no wind today,” he said.

During the five days of racing, heavier winds prevailed, which favoring the Americans.

America 3 grinder Larry Mialik, who was a tight end with the Atlanta Falcons (1972-75) and San Diego Chargers (1976), was asked if a Super Bowl championship would have meant more than the America’s Cup victory.

“Probably not,” he said. “The Super Bowl has only been around since 1967. This has been around for 141 years. I was around when they played the first Super Bowl, but I sure wasn’t around to see the first America’s Cup.”