Overlooked in the mélange of stories - Prada's predicament, Ellison's resurrection of Dickson, Alinghi's relentlessness, Mascalzone Latino's early exit - is the situation of Team Dennis Conner.
Dennis Conner overlooked? Surely not. But this is the point: Stars & Stripes has done nothing remarkable, neither losing races in horrendous fashion nor cleaning out stronger teams. TDC is resolutely stuck in the middle of the bottom pack, to the point where this reputation-laden outfit holds no fear for GBR Challenge and Sweden's Victory Challenge, first-timers both.
Remember this is the biggest, strongest campaign that DC has mounted after single boat efforts in 1992, 1995 and 2000. He has said it's his best shot since 1987, when he won back the Cup from Australia. By joining forces with the New York YC, whose flag officers cruelly and cynically cast him adrift when Liberty lost to Australia II back in 1983, Conner talks of bringing 'closure' to those dark days.
He, for one, never lost faith in the NYYC. His membership was maintained when others might have thought 'to hell with this'. And being a man still affected by the Cup, still passionate about his sailing, Conner will admit candidly to the odd goosebump when entering the splendid clubhouse's Model Room and seeing Commodore Morgan staring down imperiously from his colossal portrait over the fireplace. DC has a fan base like no other Cup sailor. Trawl through the chat rooms and forums and many of the undiscrimating DC fans ascribe near-mystical powers to the great man of being able to conjure up triumph out of a hat.
Yet the facts are these:-
*Stars & Stripes USA 66 finished ahead of only Le Défi Areva and Mascalzone Latino in the round robins. *TDC sold its boat from the last Cup - USA 55 - and scarcely sailed for over a year in the vital build-up period. *Dennis has had to struggle to raise sponsors' dollars when corporate America was fully aware that OneWorld and Oracle had deep billionaires' pockets to fund them. *September 11 was a serious setback to TDC's fund-raising. *TDC was one of the least active teams on the Swedish Match tour. The boats are different, sure, but the interpretation of umpire calls of the match race rules is constantly evolving. *The sinking of USA 77 robbed TDC of its second boat and snuffed out virtually all of its two-boat testing. No matter how the team portrays it, this and a dismasting last year, cost TDC months in development.
Since racing has started things have not gone well. Skipper Ken Read has been ordinary in the pre-starts. He's picked up two avoidable penalties in a game where second chances rarely come your way.
Conner's right hand man, Tom Whidden, may have been a tactician since 1980, but was one of the last team members to arrive in Auckland. Contrast this to the hours, day after day, that Gilmour, Coutts, de Angelis and Holmberg have put in on the water, never mind the newcomers.
And while Stars & Stripes can count North Sails' president Tom Whidden and three of North's top men in her crew - Read, Vince Brun and J P Braun - and North's parent, the Windway Capital Corp, own the near-ubiquitous mastmaker Southern Spars, TDC has one of the most ordinary spar/sail programmes in the Cup. It's Alinghi, Team New Zealand, Prada, OneWorld and Oracle BMW who are the pacemakers here.
No wonder that DC himself stepped on board for one race, that Terry Hutchinson has been steering too, that TDC president Bill Trenkle wears a frown and that the NYYC luminaries are already thinking 'not this time'...
Tim Jeffery, 4 November 2002
