Yachting: Conner not out of the running just yet

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Could we be witnessing another famous Dennis Conner comeback?

Stars & Stripes yesterday bounced back from their horrors of the past two days, on and off the water, to put themselves right back in the reckoning for the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger final.

A dogged 18s win over the gutsy Le Defi France has left them just one point behind Prada in the fight for the second spot.

Team Dennis Conner have three races left; Prada have two. If they end up in a tie, there could be a sudden-death sail-off.

Don't count out Nippon yet either, although their statistical probability is a little thinner.

Conner is famous - or infamous - for rising from the coffin in the America's Cup, when others thought he was dead and buried. A couple of days ago, Stars & Stripes' ticker was beating a little irregularly after the syndicate being stripped of a point in the protest room.

But with a little massage, it's up and running again. Tactician Tom Whidden warns to be very wary of his team.

"Well, I don't want to go home," Whidden said. "I like it here, and I'm motivated to stay.

"The key thing in this game is to make sure when you lose that you come back and win the next day. A losing streak is hard to break, just look at the New York guys - they couldn't stop losing.

"We were desperately afraid of that."

Stars & Stripes are aware that they really have to win all three races - one against AmericaOne and two against America True - to survive.

"We're looking okay. Experience doesn't pay off all the time, but when things are at their toughest, it helps," Whidden said.

"Like today, that was an important race for us. A couple of times the French were ahead, but we sat tight and didn't get nervous."

Whidden would like to race Prada in a sail-off if it comes to that. "If we couldn't beat them in that race, we wouldn't deserve to be there," he said.

After losing a couple of points on land and on the water in the past two days, it was up to Conner - the money-raiser, cook and inspiration guy in the Stars & Stripes camp - to lift the crew's spirits again.

"Dennis was pretty easy on us today. He said to us after the race we lost to Prada, 'C'mon guys, you're still in it'," Whidden said.

"We weren't psyched out by that protest room stuff. Though if we had lost to France today, it may have been a hangover from a few bad things happening."