Conner, media play cat-and-mouse game

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 4

Conner, media play cat-and-mouse game

PA Auckland Sail America’s skipper, Dennis Conner, yesterday played a cat-and-mouse game with the press. He was protected from sensitive questioning from the news media by the production team making an advertisement in which he will appear. Conner was angered when approached for an interview late yesterday afternoon and initially refused to comment on anything to do with the America’s Cup. He finally agreed to a brief discussion but emphasised he was eager to keep an appointment with Michael Fay, leader of the New Zealand challenge. Standing in a corner of the Bethells Beach surf life-saving headquarters, Conner began undressing while answering questions.

Conner is to be in an advertisement promoting a New Zealand-conceived board game called Cup Fever, based on the America’s Cup contest. Shot on steep hills

above Bethells Beach, on Auckland’s west coast, the advertisement ' shows Conner, the cricketer, Richard Hadlee, two youngsters and a “grandmother” playing the game on a windswept hilltop.

Conner’s only line in the script is to call “Protest” when one youngster, a boy, scores a point against him. Shooting, which had been interrupted by impromptu news media interviews, had obviously stretched Conner’s patience, but he managed a smile when the irony of his one-liner was pointed out.

“The timing is right,” he laughed, and he added, “One thing is he (the boy) is not an attorney, so I probably have a better chance of beating him.”

Conner said he was naturally disappointed “as an American” that the Cup had been lost by the San Diego Yacht Club.

Asked if he would be involved in the 1991 challenge for the Cup in Auckland, he said, “Well, I don’t think the ball game

is over yet. Score one innings for Mr Fay, but the game is not over. “When the game is over we will talk about 1991, or 1992 as the case may be, because none of us really knows what the next step is.”

He would not be drawn on the possibility of the San Diego Yacht Club appealing against Judge Carmen Ciparick’s decision to disqualify the defenders. Clearly frustrated by questions about a possible appeal, Conner did not hide his exasperation. “It is not my call, I am just a sailor.” He said any such decision would be made by organisers from the San Diego club. “Everybody thinks I am the San Diego Yacht Club and I am making these decisions. I am not the organiser.”

He said he had not spoken to anybody from the San Diego club. Conner said he had not enjoyed the court battles that had characterised the America’s Cup over the last two years — “Sailors don’t like it.”