Word: newports
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Imagine one of his myriad challengers actually kayoing Joe Louis in his prime, or a 20-game loser burning the ball past the lordly New York Yankees of the Babe Ruth era. For the sailing cognoscenti along the gilt-edged waterfront of Newport, R.I., an upset of such proportions is a very real possibility. Not in anything so plebeian as 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...
...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...
...first controversy involved the radical keel of the leading foreign challenger, Australia II. The brainchild of ebullient Australian Designer Ben Lexcen, the keel has provided Newport with gossip, speculation and creative chicanery all summer. Swathed in blue-green skirts whenever Australia II is out of the water, the supersecret keel has been the target of camera-wielding scuba divers from rival camps. One local cartoon lampooned the mysterious keel by depicting it in the shape of a bottle of Swan Lager, a major corporate backer of the Australia II effort...
...midsummer, however, the basic features of the keel were common knowledge around Newport: the unusual appendage rakes forward under the hull into a bulb, then sweeps aft into two delta-shaped wings designed to give the boat an advantage while heeled over sailing upwind (see diagram). The exact dimensions of the keel were well known to the International Yacht Racing Union's Measurement Committee, which had formally examined Australia II for conformity to the complicated 12-meter standards well before the racing began...
While the keel affair simmered, a second dispute, potentially more embarrassing to the N.Y.Y.C. mandarins, rocked Newport. Race officials, it seemed, had allowed...