Adrift Jewel Tries to Recover

Shortly after the America’s Cup landed in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1995, someone slipped into the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, waited until no one was around, pulled out a club and smashed the silver ewer.

The ruined trophy was shipped back to England, where it had been crafted a century and a half before, and repaired. Now it’s back in its place of honor, shiny as new. Friday, as 12 syndicates from around the globe prepare to open a 4 1/2-month quest for it in the breezy Hauraki Gulf off Auckland, the question is: Can the event regain its luster the way the trophy has?

It has been battered severely over the past decade after hitting a pinnacle of popularity in the 1980s, when first a group of rowdy Australians ended a 132-year U.S. winning streak in 1983 by knocking off the king of the Cup, Dennis Conner, 4-3 at Newport, R.I. Then Conner led an underpaid crew to Australia in 1987 to take it back in big winds and wild seas. He and his men got a Broadway parade and White House reception for their trouble.

The news since has not been good. Conner and crew deflected a challenge from a huge New Zealand boat in 1988, thrashing it with a little catamaran. Competitors spent more time in court than on the water, and the public was bewildered.

In 1992, Kansas multimillionaire Bill Koch spent more than $60 million to stave off a challenge from Italian multimillionaire Raul Gardini, who was said to have spent more than $100 million building five boats in his Il Moro di Venezia challenge. The world stifled a yawn over this duel; Koch prevailed. Gardini later committed suicide over business troubles.

In 1995, the first women’s team made a splash but didn’t get to the Cup finals. Conner and Koch concocted a rules change in the middle of the season that wound up sending Conner to the Cup match. He lost, 5-0, off San Diego in winds so light the regatta was dubbed “The Coma off Point Loma.”

The runaway winner was Team New Zealand, which did a far better job capturing the Cup than protecting it from damage. TNZ has waited a ponderous 4 1/2 years to hold its first defense off Auckland.

The long wait ends Monday when the first round of trials opens for 11 challengers, including five from the United States. The winner gets to race Team New Zealand for the prize in February.

Can this regatta capture sports fans the way the 1987 event in Australia did? That remains to be seen. The pieces seem in place.

Auckland promises to provide far better winds than San Diego did, with a range of 10 to 20 knots expected daily and stronger gusts likely. The variety of winds and weather will make racing interesting, because some boats do better in light air and others do better in heavy air. He who guesses right in boat design has an edge.

Of five U.S. challengers, three are strong and the others could surprise. Paul Cayard’s AmericaOne from San Francisco, the New York Yacht Club’s Young America and Olympic medalist John Kolius’s Aloha Syndicate from Hawaii all bring two new boats to the fray. Having more than one boat is considered the key to speed development because stablemates can run trial races against each other to test new sails and ideas. All three teams have solid budgets, though none is flush with cash.

The venerable Conner, in his eighth America’s Cup campaign, brings a relatively bare-bones budget and one boat, but he has hired a terrific helmsman, Ken Read, and a crew of veterans. If his Stars & Stripes is competitive, they can get it around the course. The other U.S. entry, San Franciscan Dawn Riley’s America True, brings the first mixed male-female crew to the 147-year-old event.

Among the six other challengers, only Italy’s Prada, with a seemingly unlimited budget from the Milan fashion house of the same name, and Japan’s fully funded Nippon, with veteran Aussie helmsman Peter Gilmour steering, bring two boats and high hopes. Spain, France, Switzerland and Australia round out the field with one-boat programs.

Whoever wins the challenger trials may wish they hadn’t. Team New Zealand was so far ahead of everyone else at San Diego in 1995, it lost one race on the water all season. The Kiwis broke with Cup tradition in organizing their first defense. Instead of having open trials as the challengers do, then picking the fastest boat, syndicate chief Sir Peter Blake decided to allow only one team, his.

So, while challengers compete for four months for the right to race for the Cup, building speed and skill out of necessity to survive, TNZ will be off by itself, testing and training in two new boats. That could be trouble. On the other hand, it means Blake’s team has had no competition for finances in tiny New Zealand and has been fully funded from the beginning, which cannot be said for any challenger except perhaps Prada.

The Kiwis also have defending Cup champion helmsman Russell Coutts, a perennial top world match racer, and longtime tactician Brad Butterworth back in roles in which they proved all but unbeatable in 1995.

The challengers’ first round robin will last a week. The opening round is a low-key testing ground; each win is worth one point. In the subsequent round robins, wins will be worth four points apiece in Round 2 in November and nine points apiece in December’s Round 3.

In January, the challengers’ field will be winnowed to six based on the round-robin results. The six semifinalists race each other starting Jan. 2, with two finalists emerging. The two will race a best-of-nine series to decide the challenger, which will face Team New Zealand in a best-of-nine Cup series, beginning Feb. 19.

To the winner goes the buffed and repaired silver ewer that has signified the height of yachting achievement since 1852, and the right to hold the next Cup regatta three or four years down the road in their home town.

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Challenger Facts

Yachts from seven countries will begine competing in the challenger series Monday:

* WINNER ADVANCES: The qualifying races will last four months, with the winner to face a boat from New Zealand in February.

* DEFENDING CHAMPION: New Zealand became only the second country other than the United States to win the trophy, with its victory in 1995 in San Diego.

* NEXT: Following the challenger series, a finals series will take place in January. The America’s Cup begins in February and finishes in early March.

* FAST FACT: This will be only the second time in 148-year history of the America’s Cup that the races will be held outside the United States.

SAILOR PROFILES

* AMERICAONE: Five-time Cup sailor Paul Cayard, who shocked the sailing world when he won the 1998 Whitbread ‘Round-the World Race on his first try, is back for his fifth try for the Cup with a highly rated two-boat campaign based out of San Francisco.

* DEFENDER: The New Zealanders have skipper Russell Coutts and tactician Brad Butterworth returning, along with sail design wizard Tom Schnackenberg and most of the 1995 crew.

* YOUNG AUSTRALIA: Syd Fischer is heading up his fifth Cup attempt with almost no money. He’s bringing his old, 1995 entry and manning it with a bunch of kids aged 18-25 and led by 20-year-old helmsman James Spithill.

* FRANCE: Perennial world match-racing contender Bertrand Pace will steer this one-boat effort with Thierry Pepponnet, also well known on the international racing circuit, calling tactics.

* SWITZERLAND: The Swiss Fast 2000 entry marks Frenchman Marc Pajot’s fourth attempt at the Cup.

* SPAIN: Spain was not a factor in its first two Cup campaigns in 1992 and 1995, but this team has better financing with support from King Juan Carlos, an avid sailor, and from the Spanish electric company Endesa.

* JAPAN: The Nippon Challenge’s fourth Cup effort puts Australian match-racing wizard Peter Gilmour, who coached Nippon last timer around, at the helm.

* PRADA: Italy’s famous Milan fashion house is backing the best-financed team in the regatta with a budget of $40 million and climbing.

* AMERICA TRUE: San Francisco’s Dawn Riley makes news again as the first female CEO of a Cup campaign.

* STARS AND STRIPES: Dennis Conner is back with his eighth Cup campaign. The first American ever to lose the Cup in 1983 was also the first to win it back in 1987.

* ALOHA SYNDICATE: Hawaii’s first Cup entry puts veteran Olympian and Cup sailor John Kolius of Houston at the helm of a two-boat campaign.

* YOUNG AMERICA: The New York Yacht Club held the Cup for 132 years before losing it to Australia II in 1983.