Yachting: Family's triumph crosses the seas

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Thousands of miles apart, Stars & Stripes grinder Larry Mialik and his son Matt scored huge sporting victories yesterday.

Mialik sen, a former NFL gridiron professional, helped Team Dennis Conner to their upset win over Nippon in the first race of the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals on the Hauraki Gulf.

At the same time in Pasadena, California, his 19-year-old son Matt was playing tight end for the Wisconsin Badgers in their win in the Rose Bowl, the crowning game of the American college football year.

Mialik sen - a former Atlanta Falcon and San Diego Charger - received a phone call on the boat before the race from Dennis Conner, saying Matt had called wishing his father good luck. It worked both ways.

* * *

Some of the world's richest men took to the Hauraki Gulf yesterday as the America's Cup began in earnest.

Italian tycoon Gianni Agnelli, owner of Fiat and Ferrari, came to watch Prada, the syndicate run by his friend Patrizio Bertelli.

Kansas millionaire Bill Koch, winner of the 1992 Cup with his America3 team, is in Auckland writing for a newspaper in Palm Beach.

Netscape owner Jim Clark was on board his super-yacht Hyperion - one of the standout boats in a fleet of 200.

* * *

A Kiwi America's Cup boat is bound for a new home in England with the hope of resurrecting some passion for the Auld Mug.

Chris Dickson's well-travelled 1995 Cup boat, NZL39, has changed hands three times in the last 12 months - the latest owner, Englishman Richard Matthews.

A keen yachtsman and owner of a British boat-building business, Matthews yesterday bought the old Tag Heuer off Dawn Riley, who has been using it as a trialhorse for her Cup yacht America True.

He already owns England's last America's Cup boat, the 1986 White Crusader, and plans to race NZL39 in England next summer.

"I hope in some small way that putting a Cup boat in British waters will get the British back behind it," said Matthews.