Fay leads with seven rounds gone

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 40

Fay leads with seven rounds gone

By

CHRIS PETERS

of NZPA Mark down the America’s Cup decision yesterday as another round to Michael Fay and another smack in the eye to the San Diego Yacht Club.

In an acrimonious saga that stretches back to the heady days of the Fremantle America’s Cup series, Mr Fay and his Kiwi challenge organisation is back on top.

It started with the nasty row dubbed Glassgate, progressed through allegations of, cheating and bad sportsmanship, to the K-boat challenge for the Cup last year that culminated in the decision yesterday by the New York Supreme Court that the America’s Cup be forfeited to New Zea-

land. From the time Mr Fay and his team fronted up at Fremantle with a fibreglass 12m Cup challenger, the New Zealanders have been on a collision course with the San Diegans personified by their skipper, Dennis Conner.

Conner, the; only man to lose the America’s Cup and then the only man to win it back, had brought a new dimension to match-racing professionalism when he started defending the trophy for the New York Yacht Club. When the Kiwis turned up in Fremantle in 1986 with their “Plastic Fantastics,” Conner the professional cried “foul.” The first round of the challenger elimination

series in October of that year was overshadowed by the row over whether the fibreglass boats were legal. Conner and his challenge backers, the Sail America Foundation, claimed the New Zealand boat, KZ7, was too light to conform with the tight 12m rule, and demanded core samples — preferably big ones — be taken. Conner also accused the New Zealanders of cheating.

The New Zealand boat stayed in one piece and finished on top of the challenge points table. Round one to Mr Fay.

In the challenge elimination finals in January 1987 Conner, with help from the other United States syndicates, beat the Kiwis on the

water 4-1. Round two to San Diego.

The New Zealanders then refused to follow Cup convention and put their technical resources at the disposal of the final challenger — San Diego — opting to back the Australian defenders instead. Round three to Mr Fay.

The Californians had hardly got the America’s Cup back to its new home and were busy arguing over how to make money from the new series when Mr Fay launched his pre-emptive strike — he threw down the most radical challenge of them all. Mr Fay commissioned plans for a 90ft waterline monohull — the largest

match-racing yacht afloat and the first mammoth since the pre-war J-Boats — and using the tiny Mercury Bay Boating Club on the Coromandel Peninsula as a base, challenged the San Diegans for the Cup. The Californians refused to accept the challenge, Mr Fay went to court, the judge ruled in his favour, and the series was on.

Round four to Mr Fay.

Faced with the lack of development time to come up with a boat to match the new KZI and convinced Mr Fay was a pirate anyway, the Californians met the New Zealanders with a radical boat of their own — a 40ft waterline catamaran. Now it was Mr Fay’s turn to cry "foul.”

He went back to the court to protest but Judge; '’ Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick told the two camps to get on with their race and she would get back to them in due course.

Round five shared. The result of that yacht-racing travesty was a foregone conclusion with the catamaran Stars And Stripes romping home 2-0. Round six to San Diego.

Yesterday the judge delivered her decision — Mr Fay was right all along. New Zealand gets the cup.

Round seven to Mr Fay-

Mr Fay leads, 4-2, with one shared, with more bloody rounds to come.