Yachting: Focus shifts from talk to deeds

By SUZANNE MCFADDEN

If Nippon survive to the last two in the America's Cup challenger series in roughly 10 days, no one will applaud louder than their neighbours, Team New Zealand.

The Kiwis reckon they now have an inkling of how fast their new Black Magic boats are, thanks to a very controversial day out with the Japanese.

All they need now is to see just where Nippon stand in the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals, starting tomorrow.

Who knows how much either syndicate gained from sailing up and down the Hauraki Gulf in shifty, light winds for four hours?

TNZ design coordinator Tom Schnackenberg had said that you would need a good couple of weeks and perfect conditions to truly compare performances.

But those four flukey hours were probably enough to take the edge off TNZ's paranoia. And we should discover over the next 10 days if they really helped the Nippon crew.

Nippon may face immediate retribution when they line up against the boat of their biggest critic, Dennis Conner, tomorrow afternoon.

So, what of Peter Gilmour's chances of surviving the cruellest cut? Nippon are ever the dark horse in this Louis Vuitton Cup series.

After a faltering start out of the gates, sitting in the middle of the field, they have charged to second at the halfway point. A change of ride helped. But now the race has been reset, and the odds are set again.

It's hard to say where Nippon rate now they have switched back to their first boat, the erratic Asura, which they claim is much faster today.

The true unknowns in this six-horse race, however, are AmericaOne - or AmericaOne-Two.

You would expect the second boat out of Paul Cayard's stable, USA61, to be faster than its reliable sister, USA49. If you believe Cayard-talk, it is.

But was Cayard simply playing games when he waited to name his choice of boat until yesterday - or had he been troubled by second thoughts?

In the spirit of the America's Cup, it was more likely to be gamesmanship, and America One mark II is favourite to go through to the finals on January 20. The tag has been torn away from Prada's stunning silver boats which dominated the round-robin series, but an American-Italian final still seems to be the strongest likelihood.

If anyone is going to cause an upset it will be Dawn Riley's America True. Months of practice on the Hauraki Gulf have proved invaluable to the one race-boat campaign. The yellow boat is fast, the half-Kiwi crew know the gulf and Riley is a driven woman.

In the same breath, don't write off Stars & Stripes. Conner is the undisputed King of Comebacks - remember '95.

* Racing in the semifinals starts at 1.15 pm each day. The six challengers will race each other twice, each win worth one point.