Word: cups
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...boxing or baseball, to be sure, but in the patrician world of yachting, where, over the din of clinking champagne glasses, the chitchat is about fears that the longest winning streak in sports is about to end. After 132 years, the U.S. could finally lose the America's Cup...
...foul-weather forecasts have rattled Newport before. Yet ever since they first wrested the old silver mug from a fleet of the best yachts the British could muster in 1851, the Yankee sailors have somehow managed to beat off all comers. What is different about this America's Cup summer is not that the Americans have slipped, but that the competition has got noticeably better, especially the yachtsmen from Down Under...
...veneer of decorum that shrouds the baser competitive instincts at Newport, R.I., during an America's Cup summer suddenly seemed in danger of self-destructing. As rain clouds and brisk northeast winds rolled in for the challengers' semifinals last week, the four remaining foreign boats-Australia II, Britain's Victory '83, Italy's Azzurra and Canada 1-did their best to concentrate on the business at hand. But a series of byzantine maneuvers by American yachtsmen threatened to turn the dueling on the high seas into an off-the-water battle over rulebook technicalities...
...leading American boat, Liberty, drafted a complaint, claiming that the keel was illegal and that the Australians should be penalized, disqualified or forced to change its configuration. Otherwise, wrote Herreshoff in his memo to New York Yacht Club officials, Australia II "will likely win the America's Cup." No foreign boat has ever done that in the 132-year history of the races, and some of the challengers quickly charged that the N.Y.Y.C. was doing its best to make sure that this year was no exception...
Robert McCullough, chairman of the N.Y.Y.C. America's Cup Committee, next asked the I.Y.R.U.'S Keel Boat Committee, the final arbiter on such technical questions, to examine the keel. "In our country," observed Australia II Executive Director Warren Jones, "we take the referee's ruling and go on with the game. Why don't the Americans do the same...