He was one of the key players in the America's Cup and he famously walked out on a Paul Holmes TV interview. Dennis Conner is 78 and long retired but, as Greg Bruce discovers, he's far from retiring.
It was 45 minutes into our phone call when he first tried to hang up on me. I guess I shouldn't have been shocked, because I had spent a good amount of time over the previous days watching and thinking about the time he walked out on Paul Holmes mid-interview and because I had read a lot of articles dating back to the 1970s in which journalists detailed how much he didn't like journalists: "If you're such an expert," he said to a New Zealand journalist at a press conference during the 1987 America's Cup campaign, "why are you sitting out in the audience instead of sitting up here sailing a boat?"
But I was shocked, because he's now 78, long retired and therefore - I assumed - more reflective than reactive and because, although we'd been covering some contentious subjects in the preceding minutes, during which time he'd become increasingly agitated, we'd spent the previous half hour talking about subjects he seemed to enjoy and about which he'd been talkative and affable.
We'd also spoken the previous week, for about 10 minutes, setting up the interview, chewing the fat, the usual Covid chit-chat and, at the end of that call, he'd said: "Since I'm doing you a favour, maybe you could do me a favour" and had asked that I mention in this story the model America's Cup boats he's trying to sell, the biggest of which is worth about $75,000. "I didn't think you'd mind," he said, "but I just wanted to be honest about it."
Later that day, I emailed to thank him for speaking with me and to arrange a time for the interview. He replied with the following email:
"I am willing to be interviewed, I am not willing to give a lifetime of my history. Do your homework before asking me questions. Lots of background info on the internet including Wikipedia, 28 world champoinships, 4 America CUP VICTORIES, 2 TIMES AROUND THE WORLD AND OLYMPIC MEDAL ect. talk next week, cheers dennis!"
I was surprised by the confrontational tone of the email and found it a bit challenging to be told how to do my job but I also understood how challenging it must be to have spent half a century listening to interviewers asking the same questions and hearing yourself give the same answers so often that you wish your mouth would fall off and leave you to go sailing, or sell some models, or whatever else you want to do with your time.
The media has always been crucial to Conner, because he relied on corporate sponsors, who relied on media coverage, and though I knew the relationship had often been fractious, I never imagined it was about to get worse.
I called at the agreed time, mid-afternoon in San Diego. He answered with an enthusiastic: "G'day Greg!" and immediately disregarded my opening question about the models, choosing instead to talk about his love affair with New Zealand, which he said started around 25 years ago when he would fly here for long weekends to sail Etchells class yachts in regattas off Beachlands. "I fell in love with the country," he said. He talked frequently and with great fondness about New Zealand, particularly Auckland, its Eastern Suburbs and the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.
He told me about the models - every boat to ever sail in an America's Cup match - that he commissioned a few years ago. Now it's time to sell them. Some of them are more than two metres tall.
He seemed eager to talk. He said it was boring in San Diego in lockdown and there was nothing much on TV. He seemed happy and jovial. Before things between us broke down and, to an extent, after, he was interesting, insightful and sometimes modest. About the 1987 America's Cup when he beat New Zealand's KZ-7 in the challenger series on his way to winning back the Cup from Australia, he said:
"I can't really take the credit for out-thinking anyone, because it was a team effort from the design team, deciding how to take advantage of one corner of the arena. We were counting on the strong wind, so the design team decided how to build a fast boat."
I asked if the increasing importance of design to America's Cup success was something that made him sad: "Yes and no," he said. "It makes me sad because the reason I won is I was one of the world's best sailors - I was voted America's greatest sailor - so a big part of my wins was because of my sailing ability, to get to the starting line, know which side of the course and actually sail the boat. So I didn't like the idea that design would be more important than the sailors. But the design's always been a key part of it, Greg, right back into the 1800s."
His comments were sometimes surprising. The thing he would be remembered for, he said, his number one feat, was not any of his four America's Cup wins as skipper, but his victory in the Star World Championships in Kiel, Germany, in 1978, when he won five of six races, against 86 other boats. "From a sailor's standpoint, which I care about," he said, "that would be the number one biggest achievement, and will never be equalled."
His second biggest achievement, he said, was losing the America's Cup, mounting the effort to win it back, having a ticker-tape parade down New York's Fifth Avenue, and his subsequent appearances on the covers of Sports Illustrated with President Ronald Reagan, and Time Magazine.
"I've had a wonderful, wonderful life," he told me, "and I'm very appreciative and I'm thankful that some of my favourite years were in New Zealand, out at Beachlands at the marina, racing my Etchells."
He had opinions about the current America's Cup helmsmen, most of them positive: "They're all incredibly good, all four of them, incredibly talented folks and capable of winning the event if things go their way."
He also said, of Dean Barker: "He's the reason the US boat is 0 and 4, because he's screwed up four times."
Things started to turn after about half an hour, when I asked him about the time when, during the 1987 Cup challenge, he'd accused the New Zealand team of cheating by building its boat from fibreglass. He told me he said it because "part of it is true", but also to get under the skin of the New Zealanders. He said press conferences had changed since then, that they used to be more fun, that they would involve a lot of banter and "friendly poking the stick at the other guy."
"But today you don't see any of that in the press conferences," he said. "They all have media training and they sit up there like sticks, saying the right thing … You could never say what you want now. It's a luxury to tell the truth."
If that seemed like an invitation to address some of the press conferences for which he's so famous - and I assumed it did - it didn't. I found this out when I asked about the time, also during the 1987 challenge, when he reportedly interrupted Chris Dickson, walking into the conference while Dickson was in the middle of giving an answer.
There was a long pause, then he said: "Honestly, how many years ago was that?"
"1987," I said.
"I can't recall every press conference I went to," he said.
He told me he liked Dickson and thought enough of him to make him skipper of his round-the-world boat, Toshiba, 10 years later. He didn't mention the fact Dickson walked off the boat after the first leg.
Things deteriorated further when I asked about the big boat challenge of 1988, when he raced a catamaran against New Zealand's monohull in one of the most pointless and lopsided contests in sporting history. I asked specifically what was going through his head when he made his famous comment, "I'm sailing a cat; somebody else is sailing a dog." There was another long pause, followed by a difficult to interpret sound that, in retrospect, was not positive.
"Well," he said, "I think I was probably pretty happy about winning the event and didn't mind poking him, poking whoever, I don't even know who was sailing the boat, in the eye."
Then I asked about the moment during that same challenge when he said to New Zealand designer Bruce Farr "You're full of s***. Get lost. You're a loser. Get off the stage."
"Listen," he told me. "I'm not going to get into all that, 40 years ago - I'm not going to be quoted in your article about something I can barely even remember happening."
He asked if I could remember what I was doing 40 years ago. I replied that I was being born, although even as I said it, I realised I was misremembering - I was born 44 years ago. Anyway, he was also wrong: that press conference was 32 years ago and I remember quite clearly what I was doing then: being bullied at intermediate school.
I said the moment he told Farr he was full of s*** had been a huge moment in this country, not least because it was what Holmes was pestering him to apologise about when he walked out of Holmes' studio on the night of Monday, April 3, 1989.
I knew, from doing my homework, that the Holmes interview was a touchy subject - in an interview with Martin Devlin, 10 years ago, Conner claimed he couldn't even remember it - but you can't interview Conner and not ask about Holmes. When he introduced that famous interview, on his first-ever television show, Holmes said: "It could be fair to say that no one raises more passion in New Zealanders than an American yachtie Dennis Conner." If that was true before the interview, it was truer by several multiples afterwards. It became one of the seminal moments in New Zealand television history, and I provide this background mostly as justification for what happened next.
"It was just a set up at my expense," Conner said.
"Do you think it was?" I said.
"Oh, of course it was!" At this point his voice started to break. The interview might have been 32 years ago but the sense-memory was right there on the surface.
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Why don't you go look at what he tried to do to me and then you'd understand," he said, his voice wavering again.
I said I had watched it several times and didn't know if it was a set-up, but that Holmes was expressing what a lot of people in the country thought at the time.
"Well that's his opinion," he said. "There's free speech. A lot of people didn't like him trying to embarrass me on New Zealand television."
I said: "It was a hugely divisive moment. A lot of people thought he'd gone too far. That kind of controversy attracts people, doesn't it? And I think that goes to what you were saying before, about press conferences becoming so robotic. Back then, you said what you felt and passions were on the surface and that kind of thing would never happen now."
He said: "If I'd known what he'd had in mind, I would have had a more guarded response and I would have parried all his thrusts. But that was then and now is now, and God bless him."
I tried to empathise. I said I didn't realise until I re-watched the interview that it had been recorded in the immediate aftermath of Conner being stripped of the Cup (and before that decision had been overturned on appeal). I said: "That must have been a devastating time. You could see the emotion on your face before he jumped you with that video clip. Was that a tough time in your life in general?"
He didn't appear to see this as empathy. "I don't know what I was thinking!" he said. "I don't remember what I was doing in 89!"
I changed the subject. I asked about his relationship with former US rival Tom Blackaller, with whom he would exchange friendly banter and poking of the stick at press conferences in the 1970s. I was trying to be conciliatory, but he didn't appear to see it that way. By this point, it would be fair to say, things had completely unravelled.
He said: "You're trying to ask me questions that are controversial. I don't like this. I didn't do this article to be controversial and to drag up s*** from 40 years ago, so I don't want to talk about it anymore. So I'm going to just say goodbye."
I asked if we could talk about something less controversial.
"How about something a little more decent?" he said.
"But this is your life," I said.
"Forty-year-old press conferences were not what I wanted," he said. "I didn't want to do this interview in the beginning. If I knew you were going to ask me, try to embarrass me over press conferences 40 years ago ..."
I said: "I'm not trying to embarrass you at all. I'm just trying to get your thoughts on things that you're well known for."
"I'm done!" he said. "I'm done!"
I said: "I can't realistically write about you without asking about the things you're best known for in this country."
"Well that's not what I think I'm best known for. I think the country likes me a lot and I'm known as a sportsperson there and I don't like you trying to pretend I'm not well-liked there. That's not what my image is."
"I'm not trying to pretend you're not well-liked here," I said.
"You've got the wrong guy here, Bruce."
"Greg."
"Greg Bruce."
"I'm not trying to pretend that at all, Dennis," I said. "I've asked you a lot about other things, about your models. We've talked a long time about that. But I do have to cover things that you're well known for in this country."
"What question do you want to ask me about, and then I'm hanging up. I've been on the phone for 40 minutes with you. That's long enough."
I said: "There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask you, but …"
"Well then, get to 'em!"
"But you can't dictate that you want to talk about one thing and then not talk about other things. You've lived a long and interesting life."
"Listen!" he said. "Should we argue about what I said I wanted to talk about?"
"You're telling me what you don't want to talk about, which is things you're very well known for. I do have a job to do."
"Okay, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to say, every time you ask me: 'No comment!' How's that?"
I said, "Ummmm, okay" and fumbled for a question of sufficient innocuousness to keep him on the phone. Eventually, I settled on something about his legendary work ethic, represented by his much-quoted phrase, "Commitment to the commitment." There was a four-second pause and, just as I began to suspect he was going to follow through on his threat, he replied.
"When I first started," he said, "it was an amateur sportsman event in 1970 and they only sailed three months before the Cup and it was part-time, so when I got involved I was just a carpet salesman in San Diego and I had time to do better. I knew that practice and taking away all excuses would make me sail better. So I spent a lot of time and effort in practice and instilling that practice into the image of my crew. We were very very good because we did try harder than the other guys."
He no longer sounded angry or upset. It was like the lengthy argument between us had never happened. I asked if he missed the America's Cup.
"Sure I miss it," he said. "It was my life's blood from 19 ... uh... well as a kid growing up, of course, until I got involved in the early 70s. I sailed in nine events. It was my life, it was my entire life, it was my passion. I was just selling draperies for the windows and trying to pay my mortgage. What I lived for was I woke up in the morning and started thinking about how to win the sailboat race I was involved in."
I asked how he'd replaced it.
"As you get older, and when you've won 28 world championships and four America's Cups and an Olympic medal, you don't have the same burning desire to win another piece of Lexan."
I repeated my previous question, with slightly different wording.
"Right now," he said, "I'm trying to stay alive by not getting the Covid. That's my main focus."
He said he has a 50-year-old, 17m wooden sailboat and another fibreglass racing boat, but Covid restrictions mean he hasn't been out in a year. "So basically," he said "you fill the time by watching the [America's Cup] boats, the American football eliminations. I like soccer - once you understand what the forwards and the wings are doing and the strategy involved, it's very very entertaining to watch - so I watch a lot of European soccer on the TV and I take my dog for a walk and, as I told you before, it's really kind of boring."
I'm often surprised by the fact people are willing to be interviewed and written about. What's in it for them? Sometimes it's obvious - they're contractually obligated, they're trying to raise their profile, they've got something to sell - but when Conner told me he hadn't wanted to do this interview in the first place, I saw no reason to disbelieve him.
When he had said, prior to the interview, "I'm doing you a favour," what did he think that favour was? What did he think I wanted? What DID I want? What were my respective obligations to Conner, to readers, to my employers and to basic human decency?
These are all good questions, with no easy answers. Conner's belief, as he subsequently made clear, was that he shouldn't be expected to discuss, nor remember, things he had done more than 30 years ago. But his most notable moments, including those he's most proud of, happened 30 years ago and longer. It's hard to imagine him doing an interview, at least with a journalist from this country, where questions about his most controversial moments aren't central.
He claimed he's best known here for being a sportsperson, and that may be true but people are never just one thing. To have failed to ask questions about the controversies that have attached to him would have been professionally negligent. Still, as I asked those questions and listened to the answers, from an increasingly emotional 78-year-old man, stuck in lockdown, filling his time watching European soccer, at the global epicentre of the Covid pandemic, I wouldn't say I felt good about it.
Earlier in the interview, he had told me that no one on board the US catamaran Stars & Stripes during New Zealand's 1988 big boat challenge enjoyed themselves: "No one liked it on the boat," he said. "We liked to RACE. We liked the competition. That was our life's blood, the competition. We weren't doing that."
In that case, I said, why was the decision made to race a catamaran?
"Cause we wanted to win," he said.
"But you said nobody liked it."
"We didn't like the racing," he said, "but we did what we had to to beat Michael Fay."
"Right," I said. "That seems a little bit out of the spirit of the game, doesn't it?"
"Listen," he said, and his voice dropped to something like a growl. 'It's a tough game."