America S Cup

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Some of America's most talented sailors are on the beach in Auckland today, but not for long.Having been eliminated from the America's Cup challenger semifinals, Chris Larson, the Annapolis-based helmsman of the Waikiki Yacht Club's Abracadabra syndicate and winner of sailing's prestigious Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award for 1997, is expected to be snapped up by one of the remaining three U.S. syndicates, most likely St. Francis...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- As is so often the case in the America's Cup, races are lost on shore just as often as they are won on the water. Sometimes they are lost even before the boats leave the dock. Although mathematically it is still possible for Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes to make the challenger finals, the International Jury's decision to strip the San Diego contender of one all-important point because of the use of an illegal rudder means it is likely to fall just short of the points required to make the finals.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- They're calling it the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes, the underdog in this America's Cup campaign, has bounced back from the brink of elimination to topple points leader and challenger finalist AmericaOne, setting the scene for a probable sudden-death sail-off against Italy's Prada. That race, expected to be contested Saturday, will determine AmericaOne's opponent in a best-of-nine series to determine the America's Cup challenger.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Paul Cayard is doing a pretty good imitation of a tightly coiled spring, a guy ready at any moment to jump out of his skin. Tomorrow, weather permitting, Cayard's $32 million AmericaOne campaign goes head-to-head against Italy's $80 million Prada Challenge in the opening match of the best-of-nine America's Cup challenger finals. At stake is the right to challenge the defender, Team New Zealand, in the America's Cup regatta in mid-February. The volcanic pressure has been building day by day here.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Two years ago, Prada's America's Cup skipper Francesco de Angelis knew nothing about the art of match racing. There are some among the American contingent here who maintain that that is still the case. They are wrong. During the past four months and the past few days in particular, de Angelis has learned the hard way that match racing at the America's Cup level is very much like back-street brawling. In the past two races alone, AmericaOne skipper Paul Cayard has shown de Angelis how to win tight races while bringing his American entry back from a 3-1 deficit to knot the best-of-nine challengers series at three victories apiece.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- The opening showdown between defender Team New Zealand and Italy's Prada Challenge for yachting's oldest and greatest trophy, the America's Cup, was postponed today for lack of wind. With only two knots of sea breeze on Hauraki Gulf at the start time, the race committee had no option but to fly the red-and-white postponement flag, which signaled a start delay, and two hours later the blue-and-white asymmetrical cancellation pennant. The forecast was for 10 knots at race time, and its failure to appear underlined the fickle weather on the gulf, where the wind is so untrustworthy it is described locally as "promiscuous."

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Sailing faster both upwind and downwind, the New Zealand boat Black Magic won the opening race of the 30th America's Cup against Italy's Luna Rossa by a commanding 1 minute, 17 seconds. It was an immediate boost to the Kiwis' effort to become the first non-American team to successfully defend the 149-year-old Cup, sports' oldest continuous trophy. It was also a convincing rebuttal of skeptics who thought Black Magic's innovative design would give it the edge in heavy weather at the cost of its light wind performance.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Paul Cayard, the sailor thought most likely to bring the America's Cup back to its long-standing home in the United States, has a reasoned view of his failure to do so. He was, he says, distracted from the ultimate goal of reaching the finishing line first by the more immediate challenge of making sure he had enough money even to get to the starting line. For much of the past three years he was focusing on fund-raising for AmericaOne, one of five U.S. boats defeated in the Louis Vuitton challenger series here for the right to challenge the New Zealanders for the America's Cup. For nine months he was sailing the Swedish boat EF Language to victory in the 32,000-mile Whitbread Round The World race.

America's Cup skipper Dawn Riley is attempting to defend her title in the Boat U.S. Santa Maria Cup - the premier match-racing yacht competition for women in the United States - against some of the world's best-known female sailors. With the Eastport Yacht Club as host, this week's five-day Chesapeake Bay event has attracted 12 sailing stars, including top-ranked Shirley Robertson from Britain, who came in second to Riley last year, and Rhode Island's Betsy Alison, the only five-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year and three-time U.S. women's national sailing champion.

THE AMERICA'S Cup - one of the sporting world's oldest and most prestigious trophies - is about a lot of things, among them wealth, rule-bending, obnoxious behavior, a visual spectacle that beats watching paint dry (most of the time), and more wealth. It does have one nonnegotiable element: salt water. And yet the Swiss won it. They won't even be able to defend it properly - they've got nowhere to race. Even if they dumped all the salt in Utah into Lake Geneva, they still wouldn't have an ocean.