Conner’s Cup Has Runneth Under : America’s Cup: Black Magic completes a sweep, winning sports’ oldest trophy for New Zealand.

In a deserved moment of exuberance, Doug Peterson allowed himself the luxury of employing the first person plural to ask the rhetorical question: “Did we slaughter these guys or what?”

We refers to the Kiwis, whom Peterson, a San Diegan, joined two years ago as a principal designer of their America’s Cup boats that completed the “slaughter on the water” Saturday, defeating Dennis Conner’s Team Stars & Stripes by 1 minute 50 seconds, the closest race in New Zealand’s 5-0 sweep of the finals.

Peterson added: “They’re going to have a hard time figuring out what happened.”

One thing is for sure, however. It was more than Peter Blake’s lucky red socks that enabled a small nation with limited technology to pull this one off.

Through four months of trials and few tribulations, Team New Zealand finished first in 42 of 43 races with an average winning margin of 3:06--the most dominating performance in any long-term Cup competition. Like the other challengers, defender Conner was simply overwhelmed.

For the only man to win the Cup three times and now lose it twice, it seemed an almost painless demise. He abandoned his own slower Stars & Stripes and borrowed PACT 95’s Young America, convinced that the mermaid boat would give him his best chance of beating Black Magic when, in fact, he had no chance at all.

“I don’t know what else we could have done,” Conner said. “There won’t be as many second-guessers as there were back in ’83.”

In their fourth try for the Cup, there is no one on earth the Kiwis would rather have beaten. He called them cheaters when he beat them in ’87 and losers when he repeated in ’88 in a mismatch with a catamaran.

But in their unbridled joy Saturday afternoon, the Kiwis found that time wounds all heels, and who could be angry at a guy who was so gracious in defeat?

“Well done,” Conner said. “I know the Cup will have a happy home. They’re good guys. They were gentlemen. A lot of credit to the whole team . . . no weaknesses.

“If someone (else) had to win this, I think they were the country everybody was rooting for. They’ll really appreciate the event. They’ll be great hosts.”

More than that, Blake, the Team New Zealand syndicate boss, has promised to “fix” the Cup--but in the sense of both sides playing by the same rules, not the stacked deck he said challengers faced in San Diego.

Saturday’s race was similar to the previous four. As steep, rolling seas tossed an estimated 800 spectator boats around like corks, the Kiwis were again maestros at playing the shifty winds that fluctuated from 8 to 12 knots.

The boats were even off the starting line but going in opposite directions--the Kiwis left, the way they wanted to go, after forcing Young America to the right. Five minutes later, Team Stars & Stripes tactician Tom Whidden told helmsman Paul Cayard, encouragingly, “A good shift to the right . . . a very good shift.”

But when they came together, the black Kiwi boat was a length ahead, although skipper Russell Coutts, lacking right of way, wisely decided not to try to cross ahead of the mermaid but to tack on her lee bow and force her back to the right.

So the boats again went in opposite directions.

The next time they met, the Kiwis were five lengths ahead, crossed easily and were in command all the way back to the San Diego Yacht Club, where they drank champagne from sports’ oldest trophy.

Many of the spectator boats were loaded with some of the 5,000 New Zealand visitors in town, most of whom planned to stay until Monday at 2 p.m., when the 144-year-old Cup will be turned over to the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. The club was booked for Mother’s Day affairs today.

Blake summed it all up, saying: “It’s only the second time it’s left America, (but) it wasn’t easy. It was a huge amount of effort by a lot of talented people.”