Conner Now a Longshot in Transition

Eventually, time and glory pass by everyone in sports, so can Dennis Conner be far behind?

His boat Stars & Stripes is rated no better than a longshot to advance past the semifinals of the challenger trials for the America’s Cup that start Sunday.

Each boat will race each other boat twice over 10 consecutive days, weather permitting. Points from the three round robins are discarded.

New Zealand’s TAB betting service lists Stars & Stripes at 10-1, behind Paul Cayard’s AmericaOne from the St. Francis Yacht Club, 2.5-1; Italy’s Prada, 3.25-1; Japan’s Nippon, 3.75-1; and Dawn Riley’s America True, 9-1. Conner is ahead only of France’s Le Defi, 12-1.

Conner has dominated sailing’s premier event for two decades, often by his success and always by his lightning-rod presence.

But he is 57. Younger men now sail his boat, and when he returned to drive it in the meaningless last race of Round Robin 3 this month, losing to Spain, the day had the air of a farewell tour.

“It was great to be back with the guys,” Conner said. “I feel a little guilty, not being out there fund-raising, but I couldn’t resist giving myself an early Christmas present by sailing the boat.”

Although he still races smaller boats, Conner has completed the transition from competitor to entrepreneur, as far as the America’s Cup is concerned.

Five other challengers have been ousted and four more have only two weeks remaining. Although Stars & Stripes figures to be among the four, the seas are littered with the wreckage of rivals who sold Conner short too soon.

His late charge at Fremantle in 1987 to reclaim the Cup and his resurrection from elimination in the defender trials at San Diego in ’95 come to mind.

Rod Davis knows that. He grew up in Conner’s hometown, San Diego, and his seven America’s Cup campaigns are only one fewer than Conner’s. This time he is coaching the Italians, who had the best record, 26-3, through the three round robins.

“Dennis was pretty weak when he started 1/8in October 3/8,” Davis said. ‘Now he’s a bit stronger, although I don’t picture him making it through to the finals.”

Davis awards an edge to the teams that built two new boats: Prada, AmericaOne and Nippon.

“The advantage is being able to develop,” he said. “Without a second boat, it’s hard to press your program forward.”

Neither Conner nor the French had second boats and have had to learn the subtleties of their own boats only from racing or in limited matchups with lesser competitors.

The single-boat campaigns of America True, Stars & Stripes and Le Defi proved superior to the two-boat bids by the New York Yacht Club’s Young America and Hawaii’s Abracadabra, but those efforts failed because of other problems: bad sailing and lack of money, respectively.

Prada and Nippon switched to their second boats in Round 3, whereas AmericaOne has waited until now to play its newer model like a trump card. USA 61 has the highest sail number, meaning it was the last new boat built.

Cayard said, “We chose to stick with 1/8USA 3/8 49 1/8till now 3/8 because she was our benchmark, and since all of the other two-boat teams had entered their second boats in the round, we were able to benchmark them.

“No one but AmericaOne knows what we have in USA 61. We pushed forward with 61 by making an appendage change during the round, which we would not have been able to do if she had been entered into competition. We started testing that change, while the rest of the fleet raced their last race.”

The appendage change refers to the keel or rudder. Davis was not intimidated.

” 1/8USA 61 3/8 is not dramatically different,” he said. “So we’re not expecting a significant difference in performance.”