Dennis Conner

Yesterday's winds at the start were 5-6 knots southwest. Seas were 3 feet.DEFENDERSYesterday's result: Team Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes (2-3) def. America3 (1-5).Start: Conner +:07 1st leg: Conner +1:372nd leg: Conner +2:47 3rd leg: Conner +1:404th leg: Conner +1:55 5th leg: Conner +1:146th leg: Conner +1:51 Time: 1:51Yesterday's bye: PACT '95 (5-0).Today's race: PACT '95 vs. Team Dennis Conner.Today's bye: America3.* (End of first round robin)CHALLENGERSYesterday's results: oneAustralia (3-2)

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Russell Coutts and Francesco de Angelis, New Zealand and Italian skippers in the America's Cup sailing competition, have the pride of their nations in their hands these days. But, with a 3-0 lead going into tomorrow's fourth race (tonight in Baltimore), Coutts clearly has the more secure grip. And, as each stands behind the wheel of a 75-foot racer here, he is backed by the support of millions of his countrymen and women. Already, both are national heroes: Coutts for outsailing veteran U.S. skipper Dennis Conner to win the Cup, 5-0, in San Diego in 1995, and giving Team New Zealand its commanding lead in the current Cup; De Angelis for getting the Italians, relative newcomers to sail match-racing, into the challenger's slot this year after winning his way past 10 crews -- five from the U.S. -- from six nations in a marathon, 202-match challengers series.

SAN DIEGO -- Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes and PACT '95 raced yesterday for the first time in the defender trials for the America's Cup -- and the four-time winner took a licking, while Young America kept right on ticking.Young America, PACT '95's entry in the Citizen Cup eliminations, has beaten Conner once and America3, the women's team, twice.In the closest race yet in either the challenger or defender trials, Young America appeared to sail higher and faster than Stars and Stripes on all points.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Lawyers for Italy's Prada syndicate tossed a bombshell protest into the America's Cup arena last night with an extraordinary allegation that Team Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes is using a high-tech mainsail designed for the New York Yacht Club's boat, Young America. The protest, lodged with the International Jury before Stars & Stripes' critical race today against America True, could, if proved, see Conner's boat disqualified from the whole event. If Stars & Stripes wins today and the protest is thrown out, Conner's boat will go into a sudden-death sail-off tomorrow against Prada.

Here's more evidence that in major sports, winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing. Dennis Conner will go down in yacht racing history as the only skipper to lose the America's Cup twice. No matter that he is also the only one to win it three times (plus a fourth at the helm). He's a loser, beaten at his own game by many of his old tactics -- and by a much nicer bunch of guys.New Zealand's triumph in what many regard as the crowning event in world-class sailing may prove another turning point in the America's Cup's 144-year history.

SAN DIEGO -- Dennis Conner, who has won four America's Cups -- more than anyone alive -- lost the first race of the Citizen Cup defender elimination series yesterday to America3, an all-woman team sailing in cup eliminations for the first time."

So I have this great idea for CBS. And I call and I call and I call. But, no, they're too busy drinking champagne, celebrating being No. 1 and picking on Dan Rather. (I heard he got really mad when Lesley Stahl sneaked up and gave him a wedgie.)sportscaster, was able to get on the air through the Sunshine Foundation, which grants wishes for terminally and chronically illyoungsters.*Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise: The boss was appearing odd. What was all that white stuff on his lips?

SAN DIEGO -- On Friday, Dennis Conner became the only skipper to lose an America's Cup elimination race to America3, the first all-women's team in the 144-year history of the competition.Yesterday, he became the first to defeat it.Sailing Stars and Stripes, Team Dennis Conner's 75-foot International America's Cup Class racer, Conner won the start by three seconds, steadily pulled away and waltzed to an official winning margin of 5 minutes, 47 seconds."First off, there was no penalty against us today before the start, like that five-boat penalty on Friday," Bill Trenkle, director of operations for Team Dennis Conner, said yesterday when asked to compare the two races.

Dennis Conner, the only man to have won and lost the America's Cup, has a new boat with which he hopes to defend the sailing trophy in May 1995.Christened Stars and Stripes on Nov. 19 in San Diego, Team Dennis Conner's new International America's Cup Class boat is registered as USA-34, the 34th of the new class built since 1991."

SAN DIEGO -- The defender portion of the America's Cup trials opens today, with Team Dennis Conner matched against America3, the first all-women's team to compete in this competition.A change in scheduling has matched Conner, the most seasoned Cup skipper here, against the women's team for the first three races of the first round.PACT '95, the defense syndicate based in Bangor, Maine, will not race until Sunday to allow the group to complete repairs to Young America, its new International America's Cup Class yacht, which was damaged during a freak windstorm last week.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- After three straight wins in the America's Cup challenger semifinals, Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes was the only undefeated competitor of the six surviving syndicates, and his American crew had emerged as a hot favorite for one of the two berths in the finals. But with six more races in this series, Conner's U.S. boat from San Diego is by no means a shoo-in. After giving up its first-place standing today to Paul Cayard's AmericaOne yacht, when it lost to the St. Francis Yacht Club's entry by 2 minutes, 43 seconds, Stars & Stripes (3-1)

Earlier this week, while confusion reigned on Hauraki Gulf off Auckland, America's Cup defender Team New Zealand seemed to thumb its nose at the fleet of challengers by sailing onto the racecourse, hoisting spinnakers on its two boats and easily bearing away in 18 to 20 knots of wind.Neither race officials nor representatives of the 11 teams competing in the challengers' Louis Vuitton Cup took great issue with New Zealand sailing across the course while races were in progress.But John Marshall, head of the New York Yacht Club's Young America syndicate, said Team New Zealand's buzzing of the fleet is a warning of what lies ahead.

FREMANTLE, Australia -- In the world of international big boat racing, there is no bigger name than that of Dennis Conner. Fourtimes an America's Cup winner, Conner is instantly recognized wherever he goes.Which is why media members from around the world, gathered here for the start tomorrow of the critical Leg 3 of the Whitbread Round the World Race, sat up and took notice when Conner, the mastermind behind the multimillion-dollar Toshiba campaign, spoke about the event yesterday.As far as Conner is concerned, the race is still wide-open.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Veteran skipper Chris Dickson, prerace favorite to win the Whitbread Round the World Race, resigned suddenly yesterday after finishing Leg 1 a disappointing sixth aboard Toshiba, the entry of Team Dennis Conner.An announcement from the team's San Diego headquarters said Dickson's resignation was provoked by "a difference of opinion on how the program should be run." It gave no further details. Dickson could not be contacted at his hotel here and was reported to be on safari.

The next America's Cup series will not occur until 2000, but entries for challenges to New Zealand's hold on the Cup closed recently and 18 syndicates from 10 countries have thrown down the gage.Six of the challenge syndicates are from the United States, including a last-minute entry by Dennis Conner and the Cortez Racing Association in San Diego, a club without even a clubhouse.Conner is the only American to lose the Cup since the schooner America routed a fleet of English yachts in England in 1851 -- and Conner lost it twice, in 1983 and 1995.

Here's more evidence that in major sports, winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing. Dennis Conner will go down in yacht racing history as the only skipper to lose the America's Cup twice. No matter that he is also the only one to win it three times (plus a fourth at the helm). He's a loser, beaten at his own game by many of his old tactics -- and by a much nicer bunch of guys.New Zealand's triumph in what many regard as the crowning event in world-class sailing may prove another turning point in the America's Cup's 144-year history.

SAN DIEGO -- America3 changed afterguards for its second race of the Citizen Cup defender elimination races against PACT '95 yesterday, but the women's team lost again.America3, the first all-women's team to sail in America's Cup competition, has not won a race since Friday when it defeated Team Dennis Conner to open the regatta.In winds around 5 knots from the northwest yesterday, America3 won the start by five seconds, but PACT '95 started in better position, sailing Young America to windward of the women and off the quarter.

By all rights, Dennis Conner should be one of America's most beloved sports heroes. After all, as captain of Stars & Stripes, he has helped keep the America's Cup in American hands by winning two of the past three Cup finals, a patriotic achievement if ever there was one.But Conner, who is poised to go for another win, when his crew meets Black Magic from New Zealand on Saturday (4 p.m., ESPN) in the first of a best-of-nine set, is not universally loved. In fact, there's a fair contingent of people who would just as soon see the Cup go to the Kiwis as have Conner get a fourth.

Reports out of San Diego last week made much of the "old boy" influence on the unprecedented rules changes that allowed Team Dennis Conner to advance to the finals of the America's Cup defender trials.Sponsors, it was said by Cup organizers, deserve the exposure the televised finals will bring.The competitors -- meaning second-place America3 and third-place Team Dennis Conner -- deserve "fair sailing conditions" after a slew of technical protests against a mid-round keel change on Conner's boat forced a do-or-die sailoff that Conner lost to America3.