SAILING / RICH ROBERTS : Conner Trying to Set Himself Up as Underdog

There are 10 challengers from eight countries signed to sail for the America’s Cup in 1992, but only four are being taken seriously at this stage.

Dennis Conner, who hopes to be the defender, recently rated three of them: New Zealand, Italy and Japan’s Nippon Challenge. That Conner didn’t mention Australia’s Darling Harbour entry, with Kookaburra veterans Iain Murray and Peter Gilmour, was perhaps an oversight. Perhaps not.

The three others have something in common: Each of their potential skippers is a foreigner.

Rod Davis, a transplanted Californian, might sail the New Zealand boat, but Conner focused on Michael Fay, the syndicate’s driving force and an adversary on two continents and in court over the last four years.

“He has the fire in his stomach to come over here and take (the Cup) back with him,” Conner said. “Plus, if you take a poll, (he has) the finest yacht designer in the world.”

Conner meant Bruce Farr, the Kiwi living in Annapolis, Md., whose boats dominate ocean racing.

Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia team has Paul Cayard, a temporarily displaced Californian, running its program. Cayard’s only problem is similar to Richard Pryor’s in “Brewster’s Millions”: how to spend industrialist Raul Gardini’s money before the Cup is over.

When Gardini leased the Driscoll’s Boats yard on Shelter Island for a compound, he simply bulldozed the old structures.

“They’re building a Taj Mahal,” said Conner, who has made do in Quonset huts in the past. “If they have a slow boat, they’ll just build a better one.”

Finally, there is Chris Dickson, whom Conner vanquished at Fremantle in ‘87, 4-1. Dickson, who will sail for the Japanese, has developed into “perhaps the finest match-racing sailor in the world,” Conner said.

Understand, Conner is trying to maneuver himself into the role of underdog, because it’s to no one’s advantage to be the favorite.

It would be tough for Conner to rate his defense rivals because nobody knows for sure who they will be. The Beach Boys USA, with skipper John Bertrand, may merge with Bill Koch’s America-3 group, has so many potential skippers, including the owner, that it could afford to fire San Diego’s own Larry Klein, the Rolex yachtsman of the year.

A merger would eliminate funding problems for the Beach Boys, and, although it wouldn’t help Koch much, it might strengthen the defense overall. The America’s Cup Organizing Committee has said it will permit multiple entries from syndicates, so honing competition and a four-boat semifinal would seem to be no problem.

A 17-month forecast: it’s going to come down to Conner and the Kiwis, anyway.

Sailing Notes

AMERICA’S CUP--New Zealand and America-3 might wind up in a race to see who has the first International America’s Cup Class boat sailing at San Diego. The tuned-up French-built boat that America-3 and the Beach Boys will share for training is expected to arrive the first week in January, with Jan. 11 set as the first day for sailing. The Kiwis’ first two boats arrived this week but still need to be rigged, which won’t start until the crews arrive after Christmas. The Italians’ two boats are due Jan. 24.

America-3 also will borrow two Catalina 37s for a two-week clinic in match racing. The star pupil: Bill Koch, whose experience is mostly ocean racing, not dueling around buoys.

LITTLE AMERICA’S CUP--Pete Melvin and Steve Rosenberg of Long Beach succeeded in getting their opponents’ catamaran ruled illegal.

The flap arose in the second race of the competition among C Class (hard-sail) catamarans at McCrae, Australia, after the French boat pitch-poled and broke its radical tilt-wing sail in two. Melvin and Rosenberg, sailing for the Chula Vista Yacht Club, also quit the race when their rig got loose, but they already led the best-of-seven semifinal, 1-0.

But when the French re-rigged with a conventional hard sail loaned by Australians, the Americans pointed out the rule about boats being built in their country of origin. John Mason, the event’s media coordinator, said it might be OK because the new rig was installed “in the French compound by Frenchmen”--the French compound, one presumes, being something like an embassy on foreign soil.

But the race committee didn’t buy it, though the point became moot. Mating their unconventional hull with a standard rig left the French with a misfit boat that, Rosenberg said, “was pitifully slow.” They lost Thursday’s second race by an hour and two minutes.

Melvin said: “We never really pushed our boat. This is embarrassing to everyone involved.”

That night French skipper Eric Bruneel invited the Americans over for some goodwill drinks. Instead of a third race the Americans tested their boat against the defending champion Australians “to see how fast we really are,” Rosenberg said. The championship series will start Jan. 12.