Word: conners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...racing about as exciting as watching grass grow might get a charge out of the litigious storm swirling around the America's Cup. After the San Diego Yacht Club defeated a challenger from New Zealand a year ago, a New York judge took the Cup away from skipper Dennis Conner and awarded it to the loser. The judge reasoned that Conner had violated the "spirit" of the competition by racing a featherweight catamaran as a last-minute response to New Zealand's extra-long 132-ft. monohull...
...know about you, but knowing that the Cup is back in the hands of Dennis Conner makes me real damn proud to be an American...
...controversy began sailing toward the court in 1983, when, for the first time since the competition started in 1851, America lost the America's Cup to a high-tech upstart from Australia. Four years later blustery Dennis Conner, losing skipper in the duel with Australia, regained the trophy in a rousing victory Down Under. But Conner offended losing New Zealand when he accused its crew of cheating by racing in a fiber-glass boat...
Complicating matters further, Fay decided to race the U.S. in a 132-ft. monohull, instead of a 12-meter (65-ft.) boat like those used since 1958. With time running out, Conner and his team knew they could not design a sufficiently speedy monohull vessel of their own. So Conner opted for a smaller, swifter, multihulled catamaran. Justice Ciparick decided to wait to see the outcome of the race before ruling on the legitimacy of the U.S. entry...
Last week Ciparick ruled that Conner's catamaran had created a "gross mismatch." The decision gave the America's Cup to New Zealand, which will host the next competition in 1991, and torpedoed San Diego's hopes for a $1.2 billion bonanza during the six-month competition. Conner, ironically, was in New Zealand last week filming a commercial for a new board game called Cup Fever. "I'm a sailor," he declared. "It offends me to see attorneys debating America's Cups in the courts. The Cup should be fought on the water." Amen...