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Sailing: Conner blocks GBR path

Stuart Alexander
Tuesday 05 November 2002 01:00 GMT
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Lowering the Stars & Stripes is Britain's objective when its GBR Challenge team in the America's Cup lines up against Dennis Conner's crew of seasoned veterans in the quarter-final of the Louis Vuitton Cup. They learned of the task ahead when Sweden's Victory Challenge, fifth overall after two rounds-robin, but therefore top of the second group of four, exercised their right to choose their opponent and opted for Le Defi Areva of France.

In the top group, Switzerland's Alinghi, skippered by Russell Coutts, kept things European by going for the Italian team, Prada, winners in 2000 of the Louis Vuitton Cup and, consequently, the team which won the right to meet the defenders, Team New Zealand, in the Cup matches. The skipper of TNZ then was Coutts, his right-hand men were Brad Butterworth and Murray Jones, and they handed out a 5-0 thrashing. All three will be on the back of the Alinghi boat, strengthened by the triple Olympic gold medallist and former silver medallist, Jochen Schümann. The other half of the top division pits a revitalised Oracle BMW, of San Francisco, against their northern rivals from Seattle, OneWorld.

The British immediately characterised their encounter as "very symbolic" as Conner represents the New York Yacht Club, which won the trophy that was to become the America's Cup against Britain around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

This is a very different affair. In the rounds-robin the score was one each and GBR was very rueful about the first loss, believing it was a race they should have won. The key will lie in just how much either team can do to their pairs of boats in the interval until 12 November.

All four boats were out on the Hauraki Gulf yesterday, GBR's new boat sporting its modified bow with bowsprit and testing its tri-plane underwater appendages. Prada has also had a new bow made in Wellington for one of its two boats. Conner, who has been described by his right-hand man, Bill Trenkle, as the team's most valuable asset, was there too, but only in sight of his boats while he concentrated on sailing in the Etchells World Championship out of Gulf Harbour.

He notched up two 10th places, so the pair of seconds scored by the defending champion and twice British Olympic representative, Stuart Childerley, would normally have led to lots of smiles, especially as Childerley had to come back and restart last of the 98-boat fleet after jumping the gun in the second race.

Setting the pace with two firsts was Mark Bradford. The Brisbane sailmaker resisted huge pressure on the downwind fourth leg to take the first race by a matter of inches. And he came from fifth in the second race to win much more comfortably a race sailed in 19 to 27 knots of south-westerly on a final, fifth, upwind leg.

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