Conner team ready but it looks all over

By JULIE ASH

Team Dennis Conner completed significant modifications to USA77 just in case fellow Americans OneWorld were thrown out of the America's Cup.

However the faint hopes the syndicate had of staying alive in the competition were dashed on two fronts yesterday.

Firstly, the cup's arbitration panel ruled that OneWorld could stay in the Louis Vuitton Cup, albeit with a point docked in each round from now on.

Secondly, Team Dennis Conner decided last night to withdraw their protest against OneWorld on the grounds that they had broken the fair play rule.

Conner's syndicate were eliminated from the Louis Vuitton challenger series after losing 4-0 to OneWorld in the quarter-final repechage. Since the series loss it has been business as usual for the team.

All of the team's key people have stayed in Auckland training - just a few opting to return to the United States.

"We completed quite extensive under water modifications," said spokesman Keith Taylor. "Team Dennis Conner are here to sail and we want to be ready to race."

Team Dennis Conner and Prada had asked the arbitration panel to throw OneWorld out of the challenger series for using other teams' design secrets.

But last night the America's Cup arbitration panel ruled not to throw OneWorld out of the cup. It instead fined them $US65,000 and ordered that they be deducted a point in the semifinal, final and America's Cup match, if they make it that far.

On the water there was no action yesterday as the first day of the semifinals of the challenger series was postponed due to strong winds.

Race officer Peter Reggio called racing off just after 2.30pm because the winds were consistently over the 19 knot limit for starting.

For racing to begin in the challenger series the wind must be between average between 7-19 knots over a five-minute period.

Since round robin two, the opening day of each new stage of the regatta has been lost to weather conditions outside wind range stipulated by the challengers.

On the opening day of round robin two, the winds were too light. On the opening day of the quarter-final, there was too much wind, and the first day of racing in the quarter-final repechage was lost because of too little wind.

Yesterday was the 15th day out of 42 that racing was lost because of either too much or too little wind.

For today, race organisers have predicted westerly winds ranging between 11-16 knots.

The semifinal sees Alinghi up against Oracle BMW Racing and Prada against OneWorld.

The winners of the Alinghi and Oracle match advance to the final while the losers race the winner of the other semifinal.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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