Cover Stories: Going For the Cup

By Tom Callahan

The America's Cup, yachting's great and garish grail, is a tumorous tureen no handsomer than a camel. In 1983 the news was not only that it was lost but that it was losable. A 132-year winning streak, the longest in all sport, was broken over the ample shoulders of San Diego Skipper Dennis Conner, the best and unlikeliest sailor in the world. He means to win it back this week.

Throughout the century and a third of challenges, lately spaced three summers apart, the dandruffy commodores of the New York Yacht Club (N.Y.Y.C.) kept polishing the silverware and admiring their own mugs. "It's a boat race," Red Smith used to like to write in the New York Herald Tribune, "in the horse-racing sense of the term." Meaning the result was pretty well arranged. If the rules were not rigged, they were at least geared for the defenders, whose original 1851 victory on the schooner America was dubious too.* When an appealing gang of Australians flew the Cup away on a winged keel three years ago and relocated it in a western backwater near Perth, only a few millionaires with wet bottoms were very disappointed. Only Conner cried.

Conner is not a rich man, though. Furthermore, he says he does not like to sail. As a matter of fact, he cannot swim. ("I spend all of my time trying to stay out of the water.") No more enigmatic character presides over any sport. At the top of his game, Conner can eat with Nicklaus, drink with Namath, offend with McEnroe, spend with Marcos and lose with Napoleon. With a straight face, as brown and

supple as an underinflated football, he calls 12-meter racing his hobby. But nearly everyone on the dock seems to believe he has singlehandedly killed it as a pleasure sport. "The weekend sailor has been shoved out," says Ted Turner, Captain Outrageous of 1977. Tom Blackaller, one of the advocates of leisure caught in Conner's relentless wake, mourns, "I'd like to get him the hell out of sailing. I think he hurts it." Conner sighs and explains, "What they're saying is, 'If I were willing to give as much as Dennis does, I could be as good as he is.' That's just an excuse to lose."

No Excuse to Lose is the title of Conner's 1978 tome, which he modestly refers to as the Bible. In 1983 his explanation for the grandest seafaring indignity since Bligh went home in a dinghy was that the best crew lost to the best boat. "Design has taken the place of what sailing used to be," he says. And now that Conner understands this, he doesn't mind. "I don't like to sail," he says. "I like to compete. I guess I don't dislike it, but my sailing is just the bottom line, like adding up the score in bridge. My real interest is in the tremendous game of life."

After two races against the Australian Kookaburra (a bush bird of prey sometimes called a "laughing jackass"), this game stood 2-0 for Conner in the best-of-seven final. Most depressing for the Australians, the lighter breezes they had prayed for all month materialized the first day, but the boat thought to be nimbler was outmaneuvered all the same. Winds that routinely topped 20 knots in the trials eased abruptly to eight or ten. Effectively the yachtsmen were back in Newport, R.I. Breaking neatly in front, Conner never rounded any buoy less than 40 seconds ahead and won by a jarring 1:41. Cheering could be heard from as far away as San Diego. Thanks to onboard ESPN cameras and the natural drama of the Indian Ocean, the sport is suddenly televisable, and armchair America is always ready to celebrate any arcane venture representing Stars & Stripes (even if a few people still wonder who this fellow Halyard is in the front of the ship).

Losing three years ago humanized Conner, at least momentarily, and winning again may amplify his legend incredibly, beyond the wharves to the plains. "The real thing that saved my sanity in '83," he says, "was that in my heart I knew I had done everything I could. But the second thing was the people. After I won the Cup in '80, I received about 100 letters. Out of 200 million people, that isn't very many. In 1983 I got thousands, maybe tens of thousands. If you look at the films after that seventh race, you'll see Dennis standing absolutely alone ((abandoned by the N.Y.Y.C.)), a small businessman from San Diego facing the music by himself, with tears running down my cheeks. People said they were touched. In defeat I found something I never knew in victory. They were proud of me. In essence, the Cup was freed." In a way, so was he.

His poverty level growing up in San Diego has been exaggerated -- Conner's father was a Convair engineer who dabbled in commercial fishing -- but by yachting standards Dennis qualified as a foundling. Filthy terms like "boat nigger" seem to come easily to these folks' gooey white lips, and Conner uses that phrase to describe his beginnings. The way "some kids hang around pool halls," Conner says he hung around the marinas begging rides. At 44 he still likes to refer to sailing as a "good way to hang out." A junior membership was finally extended by the San Diego Yacht Club, and the stout and uncoordinated boy with no real love of the sea began tweaking and fiddling and driving the sport crazy.

It is instructive to hear Conner speak of his father. "You know how a lot of men say someday they'll go sailing? My father never stopped working. I don't know how much vacation time he had accrued at the end. Then he died of cancer." The son goes sailing all right -- "only about 365 days a year." A San Diego drapery business Conner acquired through one of his several mentors and patrons must run itself. Stories abound in Perth of the fallen bicyclists and smudged newsboys the captain has randomly scooped up and taken for boat rides, but even Conner's wife Judy wonders whether he is just commemorating himself. "He never relaxes, and we never go on vacations," she says in an interesting reference. "Hell to Dennis would be a day on the beach at Acapulco." They have two teenage daughters who know a little about neglect. "If a crew member will put this ahead of his religion," Conner says, "his family, his girlfriend, his home, his career, then I'll give him a tryout."

The anonymous sailors of Stars & Stripes, well-educated men slaving for $75 a week, have a telling phrase for what they do. They speak of their "commitment to the commitment." During the races few words are ever necessary, and those are gently spoken. But in practice runs the banter is uncommonly happy. "What do you think, campers?" says Conner, who never seems to command, only question. "Will anybody be heartbroken if we change this sail? Shall we put up Dolly?" Perhaps a revolutionary and certainly a ! provocative new spinnaker -- featuring rows of billowing bulges -- is on loan from the N.Y.Y.C. The club had a falling-out with Conner three years ago; its entry America II fell out of the tournament seven weeks ago. Miss Parton's namesake constitutes a peace offering. "I love the way she shakes those thingies," he sings.

His hands are far from delicate, but the impression of them on the helm is something like that. "Feels more like a bull fiddle today than a violin," Conner muses to himself, and the wheel is some kind of concert instrument clearly. In a continuous search where one-tenth of a knot is considered a quantum find, he is thought to be worth a full knot himself. Puffs of wind can be calibrated on his shoulder blades. Tiny fractions of speed are visible to him on the sails. Like a fastidious haberdasher, he is constantly pinching and reshaping the fabric. In his salt-stung eyes, which now and then send him tearing off to Perth doctors, the ocean appears multicolored, rich in textures, contours and clues. Some believe he can see past the horizon, even into his opponent's cockpit. Why he tacks on the next wave instead of this one is a mystery to all.

Had Conner been born in Indianapolis, possibly he would have raced the brightest automobiles. People say he has a genius for sailing, but it may be that he has just applied his genius to sailing and is literally driving himself. "At a certain level, does it make much difference?" Conner asks. "Mario Andretti or A.J. Foyt? Or is it the car?" One of the shapeless peaked caps he rotates in endless supply bears the emblem of Calumet Farm. If Kentucky had bred Conner, would he have trained horses? Alydar was a Calumet colt the year Affirmed beat him by an inch in all of the Triple Crown races. Romantics tended to credit that inch to Affirmed's young jockey, Steve Cauthen. "Maybe if it comes to that," Conner says softly.

Heading out for the decisive race against New Zealand in the challenger final, he planted a thought with Tactician Tom Whidden: "Do you think the feet of our jibs are strong enough in these seas?" Well, they had been all summer. Naturally, the jib exploded. At the sound of the "boom," as Mainsheet Trimmer Jon Wright recounted for TIME Correspondent John Dunn, "everyone took off." High-wire Bowman Scott Vogel scrambled to pull the bad sail down, Mastman John Barnitt hurried to help. Pitman Jay Brown kept to his halyards. Grinders, tailors and trimmers shot off in appropriate directions, joined by Whidden and Navigator Peter Isler. Conner was left alone in the back of the boat at the wheel only he is ever permitted to spin. "Hey," he said calmly, "this is too bad." Whidden says, "When something like that goes wrong it usually manifests itself into one huge screw-up, because everyone has to do an extra job and ends up one step behind in his normal duties." But in three minutes and two seconds, both the jib and the jig were up. The Kiwis never caught the campers.

"From what we saw of his clash with the Kiwis," said Iain Murray, 28, the Kookaburra helmsman, "Conner had no great speed advantage. He won because he was always in the right spot." Another well-fed skipper -- "Lard" to his mates -- Murray cuts a Dennis figure in several ways. As New York had shunned Conner, Murray was passed over by Perth Millionaire Alan Bond, the Cup's Australian guardian. Sailing for Business Rival Kevin Parry, Murray whacked Bond's Australia IV 5-0. "He even looks a little like me," says Conner. "He lost at the America's Cup last time too. He knows what it is to lose."

Their first confrontation was less conclusive than it appeared, though in Murray's opinion Conner went too far in his gracious references to luck. "I'm not a great believer in luck in sailing," he said. "The shifting winds favored the boat in front, but Dennis made the most of his opportunities to get there. We got to where we thought we wanted to be on the start; we thought wrong. What Dennis left us was pretty much zilch."

Among the alibis Conner offered and Murray declined were the narrowness of the starting line and the nearness of the spectator fleet. A ragtag armada, 800 remarkable vessels ranging from the Achille Lauro to the Love Boat, tails along in a boiling wash. "They were a factor," insisted Conner, who called for more elbow room. In the second race the wind came up, and while tight quarters prompted a momentary Kookabura protest, Stars & Stripes ran away again and plainly seemed capable of doing it in any conditions.

Even before racing began at Gage Roads, the blowy strip between the beaches of desolate Fremantle (pop. 23,000) and the wonderfully named Rottnest Island, "confidence" scarcely described Conner's mood. "Inside I can't imagine myself not recapturing the America's Cup," he said. "Pressure is defending a 132-year winning streak with a slow boat. This is fun." With Australian Collaborator Bruce Stannard, Conner has already completed his second book, titled Comeback. Will he update with the final races? "It's done." he says, smiling. "It's done."

The Aussies refer to Conner as "Big Bad Dennis," but they regard him as a larrikin. In their singular idiom, a larrikin is someone with a highly developed sense of fun and mischief who is continuously in trouble and eternally forgiven. "I'm a larrikin?" Conner says. He likes that. In a perverse way, he has become an Australian hero, and there is an impression in Freo that even at their own expense, the Australians are ready to warm him with a chorus of "good on yer." Picturing the town without Cup or customers is a little sad, though. In Fremantle's heyday, it must have been a good place to get a tattoo, and in sleepier summers, the brilliant new bars and lavender boutiques may look a little dreary to the U.S. Navy warships that regularly put in to this liberty port.

In some sea or other, Conner is staying on. The speculation that has him quitting America's Cup sailing this year, win or lose, is wrong. "Win, lose or draw, I'm going to sail the next America's Cup, the next one and the one after that. As long as I have the fire and the drive, I have the imagination. I have to keep running to stay ahead. I'm the standard."

The ante goes up. Last time his campaign cost $4 million, this time $15 million, next time maybe $25 million. N.Y.Y.C. Rear Commodore and two-time Defender Bus Mosbacher senses "relief" among some of the members that the Cup has passed. "Many of them thought, first, the money had got out of hand. And second, the two- or three-year effort had got away from the Corinthian aspects of yachting." All told, some $200 million was spent in the past three years by seven nations fighting over a $700 silver pitcher. Of course, it is not just a trophy, and it is not only a boat race. It's a marketplace, a space program, an Olympic Games. Cockpits and boardrooms. Commercialism is bound to proliferate now, probably next time to the point of boat decals and spinnaker ads. If Baseball Emperor George Steinbrenner had been a little more forthcoming, Conner might have painted this boat with pinstripes and called it Yankee. With a better contribution, Real Estate Tycoon Donald Trump might have had Trump Card. "Funding, staffing, operating, planning, logistics, everything -- isn't that the game of life?" Conner says. Isn't it, campers? "Murray's got to be a six-figure guy," says Conner, who is not. "But I've got to think something good will happen for me along the way."

Still, money is not why he does it harder and longer and better than anyone else. The Water Rat in The Wind in the Willows may just like messing around in boats, but some rats just like winning.

FOOTNOTE: *In a confusion of directions, at Cowes, England, America sailed a shorter course.