N.Y. Yacht Club Out, and Good Riddance

Dawn Riley, chief executive and captain of the America True crew from San Francisco, summed up the America’s Cup this week.

“We’re a competitor,” she said. “It’s not a popularity contest.”

If it were, nobody would win.

America True and the other San Francisco team, Paul Cayard’s AmericaOne, already were assured of advancing to the semifinals of the challenger trials when AmericaOne lost to France’s Le Defi.

That boosted French chances for reaching the semis and put the New York Yacht Club’s struggling Young America on the ropes.

Then Riley’s team trounced Young America by two minutes and announced it would forfeit the next day’s race to Le Defi, rather than risk its only boat in the foul conditions that were forecast.

The French were most grateful. Monday and Tuesday were too windy to race, but the nine points they eventually received for sailing around the course alone secured the sixth and last position in the semifinals starting Jan. 2.

Young America was less than grateful. America True’s no-show snuffed its own dying hopes.

Some would call it a mercy killing. Young America was a team mired in misery after its first boat, USA 53, folded up and nearly sank Nov. 9. Since then it had won only five of 14 races--none against a contender--and had aroused the rancor of other syndicates with frequent protests and requests for postponements because something else had broken on the second boat, USA 58.

They will be missed like a loudmouthed bore at a cocktail party. Besides, their boats were so fast that if they had ever shut up and sailed them better, they would have been tough to beat.

As it was, they were pushovers. For world-class sailors, their performances were atrocious. Skipper Ed Baird’s crew dragged sails in the water and was often on the wrong side of wind shifts.

Someone had to take the rap, and syndicate CEO John Marshall was the only one who stepped forward.

Said Marshall: “We managed to lose races with fast boats.”

But he wasn’t blaming the crew. He blamed himself and other organizers of the campaign for not getting their money and their operation together soon enough to give the crew time to shake down and settle into the boats before arriving in Auckland less than a month before racing started.

The top four teams--Italy’s first-place Prada, America True, AmericaOne and Nippon--had been sailing their boats for much of the year.

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Challenger Trials

Final standings after Round Robin 3 (Top six advance to semifinals Jan. 2):

*--*

W L *Pts 1. Prada 26 3 109 2. Nippon 20 10 *101.5 3. America True 21 9 101 4. AmericaOne 22 8 99 5. Stars & Stripes 18 12 *81.5 6. France 12 17 77 7. Young America 16 13 60 8. Spain 12 18 53 9. Abracadabra 10 20 43 10. Young Australia 4 25 18 11. Switzerland 2 27 8

*--*

* Penalized half a point for not avoiding contact.