AMERICA’S CUP / RICH ROBERTS : Defender Trials Continue Amid Hoopla
Amid the lightning bolts adorning this town and the loud and brave disdain for point spreads, there are those whose attention will be turned seaward, not eastward, today. After all, Paul Tagliabue--or even Pete Rozelle--didn’t invent Roman numerals, and the America’s Cup folks have a XXIXth affair of their own going on . . . and on . . . and on . . . that will have sails flying long after the Chargers have sunk below the horizon and the Murf has been turned back to the Padres or their anonymous impersonators, as if anyone could tell the difference.
Among the nautical crowd there are questions more burning than whether one Super Bowl victory in a row constitutes a dynasty. For instance:
--Did Dennis Conner leave a wake-up call?
--Will the women of America 3 have their game faces on?
--How did Britannia allow one of its sheep-infested colonies to rule the waves?
The ante jumps a notch today when the second round-robin series of the defender and challenger trials start off Point Loma, awarding two points instead of one to the winner of each race. It hikes to four and then seven for the last two defender rounds, four and five for the challengers, and then the top four boats in each group advance to their semifinals in mid-March.
If it sounds as if there isn’t much pressure right now on the three defenders, who have a semifinal slot to spare, you’re starting to think like Conner. He fired his only serious shot in the last race of the first round when his new Stars & Stripes (3-3) stopped PACT 95’s winning streak at five. Point made.
Until then, the man who reinvented the America’s Cup seemed to be taking less interest in the event than the progress of his hometown Chargers toward Miami. He also figures to be distracted in that direction today. Stars & Stripes drew a bye, leaving it to America 3(1-5) and the mermaid boat from Maine to launch the second round. At 52, the old pro intends not to peak too soon.
PACT 95 (5-1) took the first round very seriously. Kevin Mahaney, who won an Olympic Soling class silver medal and was runner-up in the World Match Racing Championship at Long Beach in 1992, is the unassuming skipper of the team from Bangor, which won points for resiliency as well as for racing.
At times the team seems to be paying its bills out of a piggy bank, but when its boat, Young America, was damaged in a freak tornado, they had it back sailing--and winning--in eight days. The mermaid pop artist Roy Lichtenstein painted on the hull was renamed Dorothy, as in Oz.
The women of America 3expect to have a new boat for the fourth round in March. Their sponsor, Bill Koch, promised.
And, Koch says, it will blow Dennis and Dorothy away.
“I didn’t expect them to be as formidable,” Koch said of PACT 95. “Dennis is always going to be there and be good . . . (but) I think he still has his financial limitations.
“I think his boat has limitations, too. I don’t think it handles the waves well, and I think it needs a new keel to go upwind and tack well. He hobby-horses too much, as PACT’s boat does.”
A new boat alone won’t make the women winners. Although a hard-driving training program has made them physically tough and strong--a surprise to many doubters--their inexperience at this level in these boats showed in tactics less reflexive and aggressive than their rivals’.
They also seem to be repeating a mistake Koch made with his male crew in ‘92--waiting too long to establish who’s running the boat. Instead, they are pursuing an indefinite rotation of five women at the three afterguard positions. The only constant has been J.J. Isler steering for the starts and calling tactics. Leslie Egnot, a New Zealand transplant from South Carolina, and Whitbread veteran Dawn Riley have been alternating at the helm.
Egnot said, “We’ve known where to go, but the problem is getting there. We have to work on changing gears in changing conditions and on our light-air performance, and we’ve got to become comfortable with sailing these boats in this (disturbed) sea state.
“It’s disappointing to be beaten, but we’ve come a long way. It’s been giving us a kick in the bum to come out fighting even harder.”
Koch figures that Conner and PACT 95 have already played their only cards and are somewhat shy of taking the pot. He said his old America 3that successfully defended the Cup in ’92 still looks smoother going upwind in the San Diego swell, and when the women get their new boat, look out.
“The thing I find fascinating is that both PACT and Dennis have configured their boats for 7 knots (of wind) or less,” Koch said. “The probabilities based on a 40-year average in San Diego are that it will be less than 7 knots only 30% of the time.”
Therefore, Conner and PACT 95 will beat the women only 30% of the time?
Koch smiled.
“The defenders just have variations on America 3,” he said. “We had something similar to the PACT boat that we have tank-tested, and we aren’t going to build it. There are more radical versions than that coming. We’re going to bring one.”
*
Thin is in for the ’95 America’s Cup. The most radical boat racing in the first rounds was the skinny, off-white NZL 39 that Bruce Farr designed for Chris Dickson. It has the Swiss watch company TAG Heuer’s logo and name plastered all over it, but that’s not its name. Rules forbid naming boats after commercial sponsors, although French Kiss, sponsored by French Kis, the fast-photo company, slipped through in 1986 at Fremantle.
NZL 39 won five of its six races in the first round of the challenger trials, second only to the other Kiwi entry, Team New Zealand (6-0). For what it’s worth, Russell Coutts drove TNZ’s Black Beastaround the 18.55-mile track faster than any of the other five boats on the course on five of the six days it raced. Course record: 2 hours 11 minutes 47 seconds, on a day when it was blowing 15 knots.
Of course, New Zealand boats had fast starts in the ’87 and ’92 America’s Cups, only to run out of steam in the clutch. The hope Nippon Challenge (4-2), oneAustralia (3-3) and France (1-5) have is that their second new boats will be faster than their first. Sydney 95 (2-4) and Spain (0-6) will have to make do.
Next to the Kiwis, the Japanese have been the most consistent performers among the challengers. They maintained their concentration despite the tragic earthquake in their homeland, and the massive overhaul of JPN 30 since its disappointing showing in the IACC Worlds also worked--so well, apparently, that Team New Zealand cried “foul!”
The Kiwis said the rebuilt boat is in essence a third new boat, thus violating the rule limiting new boats to two a team. A ruling by the international jury was pending.
Nippon’s other question is whether “head coach” Peter Gilmour will be able to continue riding along as the supposedly non-contributing 17th man--normally, a role meant for sponsors, owners or visiting royalty. Gilmour, an Australian who is the world’s No. 2-ranked match racer, failed to meet the two-year residency requirement to sail as a working member of the crew.
Some rivals can’t complain too much. Other world-class sailors are riding as 17th men. Passengers on America 3have included coach Kimo Worthington and Dave Dellenbaugh, who was starting helmsman and tactician on the boat when it won the Cup in ’92. Long Beach sailor Steve Flam has been riding on Syd Fischer’s Sydney 95. When skipper Chris Law won the Congressional cup last year, Flam was his tactician.
However, nobody questioned the presence of 29-year-old Cristina de Borbon, a noted woman sailor, aboard Rioja de Espana. She is the daughter of the king and queen of Spain, and how can you protest a princess?
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
How They Stand
After the first round robin
CHALLENGER TRIALS
Syndicate W L Pts. Team New Zealand 6 0 6 NZL 39 5 1 5 Nippon Challenge 4 2 4 oneAustralia 3 3 3 Sydney 95 2 4 2 Le Defi Francais 1 5 1 Rioja de Espana 0 6 0
DEFENDER TRIALS
Syndicate W L Pts. PACT 95 5 1 5 Team Dennis Conner 3 3 3 America3 1 5 1