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'We don't give up too easily' AmericaOne must rally from tough weekend
Posted: Monday January 31, 2000 03:42 PM
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) -- The crew and boat of the AmericaOne syndicate have been battered. Skipper Paul Cayard's confidence -- in public anyway -- remains intact. "We don't give up too easily," he said after falling behind Prada of Italy 3-1 in the best-of-9 America's Cup challenger finals. "It's not something to get a complex about," he said after breaking his second spinnaker in two days in Sunday's fourth race. "This is an awesome mast that we put in the boat," he said of his backup mast after the original was damaged in Saturday's third race in which he withdrew for fear the mast would break. Still, the Americans must win four of a possible five races to advance to the America's Cup final against defending champion New Zealand, another best-of-9 series starting Feb. 19. After taking today off, AmericaOne and Prada were scheduled to meet on the 18 1/2-mile Hauraki Gulf course off Auckland on Tuesday. So far, neither team has shown a decided advantage in boat speed. But Prada's equipment and crew work have been superior. On Saturday, AmericaOne crew members Curtis Blewett and Greg Prussia were injured when they went up the mast before the race to fix a halyard. After the race, David McClintock was smacked in the back by a line that snapped while the yacht was being towed to port. Cayard led Sunday's race at every mark, but a poor gybe on the sixth and final leg allowed Prada to make a comeback. About a minute from the finish line, America One was still ahead but was penalized for getting in the way of Prada, which had the right of way. AmericaOne crossed the line a half boat-length ahead of Prada, but had to make a 270-degree penalty turn and lost by 2 minutes, 32 seconds as a result of the call by umpires in a boat watching the race. "A human being had to make a call and the umpires made the call that they thought was right," said Cayard, who disagreed with the ruling. "You've got to live and die with that." In the challenger semifinals, Prada was penalized in a similar situation in a race against AmericaOne. That time, Cayard noted, it took the umpires eight minutes to make a decision. On Sunday, he said, "it was a very quick call." Cayard, however, has been in this position before. In 1992, he overcame a 3-1 deficit to win the challenger finals as skipper of Il Moro di Venezia of Italy against New Zealand. Il Moro eventually lost the America's Cup finals to Bill Koch's America3 (America Cube). In 1995, Cayard lost in the finals 5-0 with Young America against New Zealand's Black Magic, a much better boat. And this time, the better financed Prada campaign seems to have more durable equipment. Cayard's spinnakers are made of nylon, while Prada's are Cuben fiber, a material developed by Koch's syndicate for 1992. "The Italians have a nice advantage with the Cuben fiber cloth," Cayard said. "It's really solid and it's not going to break, so we have to watch out for that." Still, he said the key to the series will be a team's ability to come back from a heartbreaking race. So what does he plan to do in Race 5? "We're going to come back from a heartbreaking race," he said.
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