Musings: Call the Coroner

The America’s Cup is dead. Long live the King. End of story…perhaps.

It has been pronounced dead - - in the United States of America - - where the world’s largest number of sailors resides. Not in Switzerland, not in Spain, not Australia, not New Zealand or Lapland. The good ol’ U. S. of A. They’re here. They spent $50 million at the (Sen.) Jacob K, Javits Convention Center during a ONE-WEEK boat show on W. 37th Street in NYC.

Weirdly, they have all lost interest in this superb event (not the sport, just this Clash of the Titans). It’s a fact. Whatever was there isn’t. That life’s been snuffed out, which is more than a little ironic, since the skippers and several of the crew members once lived and learned the difference between processed Dacron and laminate sails.

Kaput. Not breathing. Dead in the water. A lame duck. A dead duck. A ruptured duck, living in suspended animation. Frozen. Without life. Beyond recovery. Killed, squashed, run over, shot, stabbed, choked, maimed, strangled, poisoned, run out of town on a rail, hanged, killed, killed off, thinned, beaten and a sailor’s most dreaded way to go: Drowned. Your worst nightmare. Gonzo.

* * *

Losing something taken for granted for 132 years, since Civil War times, does that to an event, especially one so hard to write about or film, and harder to understand. As a symbol, the America’s Cup in the 19th century captured imaginations. It was the overcoming of yet another stigma of domination by England over her former Colonies. Who were these brash Americans beating All the King’s Men. In the 20th, there was drama and feat. In the 21st? Nothing. No news hook to grab, not story to tell. De nada.

Previously, the U.S. re-winning the Cup, like clockwork, became a poke in the eye every couple of years by upstart American’s, popping a left hook into the gut of their seafaring, salty-dog rivals across the pond. “You may have been a global sea-power, once, but no more in amateur sailing,” American’s gloated in the 19th century. You’ll never win this back. So there.

From Day One, America’s winning of the famed match-race, mano a mano, made the nation’s sailors feel better. They stood prouder at the helm and enjoyed lording over the world’s sailing community. “We’ve got the best, guys, and don’t you forget it.” In today’s parlance: “We bad. We bad”

* * *

But that was then, pre-1987. The upstart Australians took all that away and more. In one stroke of skill and luck, they took away the Cup and torpedoed the global audience sailing had had to that point. Swish. Kaputsky. End of interest.

They’re bored: Network TV coverage virtually stopped, up to this day. European media coverage got a shot in the arm, but for how long? Gone are the massive US audiences that started shrinking and disappearing the day after unbolting of the Cup from its NYC pedestal. A few sailing publications continue the saga, but even they ask, “What’s the p+oint?

As soccer dominates Europe, and football and baseball capture the hearts of Americans, sailing has now taken the proverbial backseat as a professional sport of interest. It’s unbelievable: Winning brings fans, losing and non-participation snuffs interest. It’s that simple.

If you read America’s Cup Skipper John Bertrand’s book about that (unlikely) 1987 event, where Australia eked out a victory by out-sailing unbeatable Dennis Iron-Man Connor, it’s as though he’s writing about a different event. America’s Cup statistics were on the lips of a worldwide audience. The man in the street knew what the odds were. People held their collective breaths awaiting the outcome. Could the mighty U.S. team of machine-like and arrogant professionals be derailed? Could the Blunderers from Down Under out-tack, out-jibe, out-start, out slam-dunk, out chute set, out-strategize those haughty America’s? Never happen, they pronounced, confidently. “You can take all our best skippers and all our best sailors, and we’ll still beat you,” they told each other.

* * *

Today, doesn’t it appear possible, even plausible, that event coverage at one time included live feeds from the Goodyear Blimp, story filings from every wire service, reporting by every TV and radio host worth a lick, wall-to-wall news media from the entire civilized world? Could a U.S. city (Newport, Rhode Island, pop. 26,500, including some of the wealthiest people of the day) be brought to its knees, to a complete stand-still, because of a sailing event? Did school children actually have an opinion about the skippers and boats, including that mysterious (winged) keel? Did the nightly news hang on the every word uttered by a sailor?

You’d never know it now. You’d never know it now.

Sailboats have become just another prop for advertisers, another way to embarrass actors and actresses as they pretending to pull in the mainsheet or let out whatever that rope-thing does. Yachts have become just another way to sell insurance or provide a backdrop for the weatherman.

Today, you can’t even find a cabbie who gives Thought One about this so-called global activity, even fewer so since the big guys went to court. In fact, going to court after a sport is conducted pretty much dooms any sport. Going to court drove the last nail in the pine coffin that’s the America’s Cup. It’s six-feet-under, a-rotting, wormy.

What’s currently being fought over is the Ghost of America’s Cups Past, Ebenezer Scrooge in a dry suit come a-haunting. Not the silver goblet of old. It’s the Zombie Cup, shuffling walking around a shopping center because it’s there, in the words of the walking dead in Dawn of the Living Dead.

Edgar Allen Poe penned it in The Bronx in 1845: “Quoth the raven: Never more.”

* * *

Moving forward, it’s going to take more than a lot of practice races to bring a drinkable elixir of life back into the Cup in this country. It won’t just happen, however. It can be held all right, but no one will come, not without a U.S. Challenger or four or six.

Then, it will take media manipulation and public relations and advertising of the classiest sort to generate a single story in the Paper of Record which carriers All the Stories Fit to Print. Plus the sport needs a global spokesman, a snake-oil salesman with something to hip say. A hipster, a huckster, a tall drink of water, a player.

The sport has to find one, fast, though several quotable heroes would be better. Caricatures of sailors larger than life, that’s what needed, right now to make this sport noteworthy. It will take guys and gals brimming with quotable quotes, pithy remarks showcasing their talents and belittling those of their rivals. They’ll be competing for the day’s headlines with kidnappings, muggings, rapes and easier-to-report stories from police blotters worldwide. The starting gun has fired. It’s time to crash the line on the side nearest the first mark. It’s time to remove sail twist and flatten the draft, grind in the genny and climb out on the toerail.

It’ll take unusual sailboats, with secrets and intrigue gradually revealed. Sails made from reprocessed Challengers. Sheets of Olympic athlete’s bulging muscles processed through a blender. Make no mistake, it’s going to take carefully crafted guts and glory and glamour. It’ll take a Paris Hilton, a Presidential Contender, a Michael Jackson, a David Beckham. Someone larger than life. A Ted Turner wannabe. And it’ll take money promoting special events. Giveaway’s and T-shirts. But when to begin this pilgrimage, this kowtowing to the U.S. news media? Today, right now. It’s almost too late. Man your pencils and telephones, begin promoting this stellar event. In a few familiar words: On your mark, get set, GO.

This event is dead otherwise. Long live the King. Not.

* * *

It’s going to take a lot more than a sailing event to wake up the world’s news media. It’s going to take sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. Or the equivalent. Something worth writing about, endlessly, speculating about, interviewing someone about, something worth photographing and filming. In short, a world-class event, carefully packaged and promoted to the stars.

Your competitors? Not other Challengers, but soap, toothpaste, woman’s hygiene products and pharmaceuticals: All advertised products and services challenging for their 15 minutes of fame in the daily news. But they come first, since they’re potential and existing advertising. Global sailors and sailing events? They’re just another high-school team whose swimmers and marching bands swim and play for their parents. No one else really cares and that’s the way the world’s press is playing it.

It’s going to take not one, not two, but no less than FIVE Challengers from the U.S. to get this moribund event back in the editor’s queue. It’s might also take a miracle. Fast, faster than fast. And controversy, sex appeal, monied personalities. The vision thing.

Like Jesse Jackson visiting a Navy ship. Jane Fonda calling on Ross Perot. Dog biting man. NEWS. Something worth remarking about, buying a paper for.

News. News coverage. Millions and millions and millions of viewers (and dollars) paying homage. Sorry, it doesn’t just happen. It takes carefully crafted strategy, every bit as complex as the hull displacement and the length of the J from stem to mast.

Without these, dust off the dirge and order a marble tombstones…this event’s dead on arrival.