San Diego -- John Bertrand, the Australian who won the America's Cup in 1983, attempted to put the defender and challenger trials in perspective after his oneAustralia had lost a one-point race to Team New Zealand last week in the first round-robin race.
"It was just one day of racing," said Bertrand, back in these trials for the first time since beating Dennis Conner and Liberty off Newport, R.I. "What you have to realize is that this is a sailing marathon, and where you start the regatta might not have much bearing on where you finish it."
But with the first leg of the four-month regatta complete, it still appears, as Win New Zealand skipper Chris Dickson said, "The rich get richer, and the rest get the leftovers."
Among the three defense syndicates, the Maine-based PACT '95 team, led by John Marshall and Kevin Mahaney, appears to be well prepared and ready to race after winning the first round of the Citizen Cup defender trials.
Team Dennis Conner, led by the San Diego skipper who has won the America's Cup more times than any man alive, has sailed a quirky series, with Paul Cayard replacing Conner at the wheel in several races.
And America3, the only women's team ever to compete in these trials, appears to have gone backward since beating Conner and Stars and Stripes in the first race 10 days ago.
The women
"If I were the sailing coach of America3," said Ron Rosenberg, PACT '95's sailing coach and team captain of the 1992 U.S. Olympic sailing team, "I'd be pretty disappointed at what I saw them do against us in Young America -- after they had nine months of training.
"Tactically, they are average at best, and their crew work is barely average. Overall, I don't think they have improved a bit since the worlds."
In the International America's Cup Class world championships sailed here last fall, America3 finished second to Bertrand's oneAustralia.
But its boat, which was built for the 1992 America's Cup, has had a hard time staying with Stars and Stripes and Young America, both built for these trials.
At times, Rosenberg said, the women have been tentative at mark roundings and slow to attack their opponents when possible.
"They are being conservative, and that costs you ground on the race course," Rosenberg said. "You have to know your limits and react at the outer edge of those limits."
Peter Blake, chief of sailing operations for Team New Zealand, said that the syndicates that are doing well have "that big thick log of experience," and the women's team does not.
"Experience is vital; you can't win without it," said Blake, a veteran of several Whitbread Round the World races and hundreds of big-boat regattas. "You can't start a bunch of rookies and expect to win. It won't happen. Life is not like that."
But even if America3 were to lose every race from here on in the four round robins, it still would qualify for the defender semifinals starting March 18. Point totals will determine seedings in semifinals.
"The points in these early rounds really are not that important," said Vincent Moeyersoms, president of the America3 Foundation. "That always was the plan, to come out with the faster boat when it counts and suffer with less than an optimum performance in the early rounds."
America3 expects delivery of a new boat in late February, when the point value of victories escalates to four and seven points in the third and fourth round robins, respectively.
Victories in the first two rounds are worth one and two points, respectively.
"Our goal all along was to learn as much as we could about the other boats," Moeyersoms said, "and to keep the crews climbing the experience curve -- to make the mistakes early rather than when it really counts."
Blake is skeptical whether any crew that hasn't had a lot of big-boat experience can come in and seriously challenge those crews that have it.
"You won't work anyone into shape in nine months," said Blake. "Nine years, maybe, yes."
The men
While America3 has had its problems, Team Dennis Conner has been better, except for the first race, in which a pre-start penalty put Stars and Stripes in a hole from which it could not recover.
Still, Conner's strategy is hard to figure. While Young America has gone full bore from Day 1, Stars and Stripes seems to have been experimenting in the first round.
"We still don't know where our boat is [in terms of optimum performance]," said Cayard, skipper of 1992 Cup challenger Il Moro II of Italy. "But it seems to be pretty good in the light air at the moment -- but if we pull the right strings or push the right buttons, things could change immediately."
Conner said that while Cayard has been sailing the boat, he has been concentrating on improving sail shape and determining which buttons and strings should be manipulated when.
"Obviously, when you have someone [Cayard] that good, you're a darn fool if you don't let him race," Conner said. "I am fortunate to have those assets, and if there is a better sailor in the world, I don't know who it is."
But Young America, with its afterguard of Mahaney, John Kostecki, Robert Hopkins and Kenny Read, seemed to have Stars and Stripes' number.
"We came here race-ready," said Rosenberg, "and I think that in such a long regatta, from Day 1 you should be ready to win."
Or good enough to come close.
"What these trials are about is pushing each other," said Mahaney, a silver medalist in the 1992 Olympics but a newcomer to America's Cup competition. "We want to push Dennis. But we want to be pushed, too, because without that pressure, we, the defenders, could lose the America's Cup."
The challengers
Among the seven challenge syndicates competing for the Louis Vuitton Cup, Team New Zealand (5-0) has been virtually uncontested in any race after the first leg.
"But you can't read much of anything into that," said Blake. "We don't even bother to think about it much."
But you can bet that the rest of the challenger and defender teams are thinking about it.
"What I think we are seeing is that Team New Zealand has lifted the competition to another level in terms of performance," Bertrand said.
While Team New Zealand has been tough, Spain, France and Sydney '95 are well off the pace and, unless there is great improvement, probably will not make the challenger semifinals.
But the poor sister in all this, Win New Zealand, the TAG Heuer Challenge, has a chance to break the bank.
Dickson's team is challenging under the name of a yacht club that operates out of bar in a tiny fishing village near Auckland, but he has in his corner Bruce Farr of Annapolis, possibly the best naval architect in yachting.
Dickson's team started strongly, muddled through a poor race with Team New Zealand, and picked up the pace again.
"We know where we are at the moment," said Dickson, who sailed in the 1987 trials with New Zealand and in the 1992 trials with Japan, "because we came here with carefully defined expectations for ourselves and our boat -- and we expect to be here for the complete term."
Dickson's team, with perhaps the lowest budget ($9 million) of any syndicate in town, was among the last to set up operations here and start sailing.
"But to be where we are right now despite our short time here," said Dickson, "I am very pleased."
The Japanese team, Nippon Challenge, seems to have discovered that it can sail well without sailing coach Peter Gilmour or Dickson at the helm.
Japan, with John Cutler at the helm and Peter Evans as tactician, has been tough after an early loss to Win New Zealand and a loss to Team New Zealand on Friday.
And they are doing it with an old boat.
"We are improving each step along," said Makoto Namba, skipper of the Nippon Challenge. "We have some way to go, but we also have a new boat coming, and that will help."
Cutler said that the new boat should be delivered later this month and could be ready for the next round robin.
"The crew has been doing a great job all around," said Cutler. "They have been working toward this for three years and I think they are starting to realize they really have a shot."
In 1983, Bertrand and Australia II went into Newport, R.I., for the challenger trials with a rule-bending secret weapon, the winged keel, and narrowly won the America's Cup.
"Some of the players have changed, the syndicates are bigger and the organization is better," said Bertrand. "It has become more like a Formula One racing team, with more money and more effort than ever before.
"But Dennis [Conner] is still there and there is still the sense of history and proportion that makes this the America's Cup."
But standing in the way of Bertrand's possible rematch with Conner are Nippon and two New Zealand syndicates.
"They have provided a performance for our own team to focus on, performance numbers that we can lay into the new boat," Bertrand said Thursday before oneAustralia launched its new boat, "which is part of our game plan.
"At this point, we have a sense of anticipation. The key to this regatta is to realize that anticipation, to make it reality."
OneAustralia will race its new boat in the second round starting Jan. 29.
Team New Zealand, on the other hand, used the newest of its two boats in the first round and ran away from most of the competition.
But in the next round, it might switch to an older boat to confuse the field.
"You can surmise all you want," said Blake, "but everyone has his own way of approaching the America's Cup -- and we're doing it our own way.
"It's a check-in time right now. Even the next round is a check-in with various things we do."
But Team New Zealand, nicknamed Black Magic, won in heavy and light air during the first round.
"In that [Sunday] race, the seas were bad and the wind was quite fresh," Blake said. "Any worse than that and you run the risk of someone getting hurt badly or getting killed.
"But those conditions are unlikely later on in this event. The breeze generally lightens up and gets steadier."
And, not surprisingly, Team New Zealand's most impressive victory in the first round came in light, fluky conditions against oneAustralia.
And Blake gives the impression that a light air rocket is expected to be the best boat for this four-month regatta.
"The angle of the Louis Vuitton series is to find the best boat for the America's Cup match [starting May 6]," Blake said. "It is not meant to be a survival series. We'll find out at the end of the day
who's best."