High-pressure system

SAILING

Pressure and frustration were the only consequences of a second day of cancelled races on Thursday in the third round of both the Louis Vuitton and Citizen cups in San Diego. The first day was lost because there was too much wind; the second produced some reasonable racing, but the third, although it started promisingly, ended in abandonments.

Kevin Mahaney again put in a good start against Paul Cayard steering Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes, only to find the breeze dropping from eight knots to two and Conner being more than nine minutes ahead at the first turning mark. The race was abandoned before the second.

The same was happening on the challenger course, perhaps to the relief of the French after Marc Pajot was well beaten at the start by Russell Coutts sailing Team New Zealand. They completed two legs before being invited to go home by the race director, Pat Healy. John Cutler's Nippon Challenge was more than 15 minutes ahead of Sydney '95 after one leg, and John Bertrand's oneAustralia more than four minutes ahead of Pedro Campos' Bayona-Valencia when their races were abandoned because they were outside the maximum time limit of one hour and 20 minutes for the first two legs.

Time limitations of another kind are again becoming an issue. The defenders have only two reserve days and will need to tack both of them on to the end of this series. The seven races for the challengers will also take a minimum of nine days, reducing the time available before the fourth and crucial round-robin, starting on 2 March, to decide the four semi-finalists.

That is when major modifications are planned and new boats will be introduced. Now the opportunities for testing and tuning are uncomfortably restricted.