Hawke asks if Americans cheated at Fremantle too

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 1

Hawke asks if Americans cheated at Fremantle too

NZPA-AAP Canberra . The Australian Prime Minister’s first reaction to news of the court decision which stripped the United States of the America’s Cup was to ask whether the Americans had also bent the rules in Fremantle in 1987. “I have to confess I haven’t heard the America’s Cup ruling, please tell me,” Mr Hawke told journalists at the opening; of a television studio in Canberra. When told the New York Supreme Court had found that the San Diego Yacht Club had showed poor sportsmanship and violated the centuries-old rules of

race, Mr Hawke asked if they had also “cheated in Fremantle?”

“We probably would bring it back to Fremantle, and then the New Zealanders could challenge us,” he said. The Australian business tycoon, Mr Alan Bond, lost the Cup to the San Diego Yacht Club in Fremantle in 1987. That defeat led to the Kiwi challenge last year and ultimately to yesterday’s court decision which overthrew the United States victory over the New Zealanders. Meanwhile a backbencher, Mr

Gordon Scholes, a former Speaker and Minister, has written a tongue-in-cheek letter to Mr Hawke, calling for the “Todd River Yacht Club” at Alice Springs to be the next America’s Cup challenger.

The Todd River, at present in flood after heavy rain throughout central Australia, is normally a dry river bed.

Mr Scholes said in his letter that “the absence of water should not be any handicap,” as an actual yacht race was now only a minor technical requirement for winning the America’s Cup.