Will They Blow the Men Down?

By MARGOT HORNBLOWER/SAN DIEGO

The cold war is fading, so let's get down to a more basic conflict: Can the girls beat the boys? Ever since Queen Victoria reluctantly handed over an 8- lb. silver ewer to a team of swaggering American sailors in 1851, the America's Cup (as it was called from then on) has overflowed with machismo. It was not just the Vanderbilts, the Liptons, the Ted Turners, the Alan Bonds, the Baron Bichs and the Raul Gardinis out to prove who was the richest, swiftest guy on the dock. The very image of the U.S. as a mega-tech superpower seemed at stake. Let Airbus lend its experts to the French, let the Australians weigh in with winged keels, let the Japanese marshal their mighty corporate establishment; the best of Boeing, Lockheed, M.I.T. and General Motors would jump to attention with aerodynamicists, meteorologists, computer analysts, naval architects and fluid dynamics experts to prove that the America's Cup still deserved to be American.

Now, as the venerable contest gets under way this week in San Diego Bay, the question is whether it still deserves to belong to the boys. For the first time, an all-female crew -- whose members range from Ivy League Olympians to a deaf bodybuilder featured on the TV show American Gladiators -- will be competing for a spot in the world's most famous sailboat race. In a grueling round robin over the next three months, the women, recruited by 1992 Cup winner William Koch, will race veteran Dennis Conner and another all-male crew, PACT '95, for the single U.S. spot. Seven foreign syndicates, including a formidable Australian team, will compete separately against each other. In May, U.S. defender and foreign challenger face off for the best of nine races.

In the past five years, two all-female crews have sailed the 33,000-mile Round-the-World Whitbread, the most punishing of fleet races. And on the international regatta circuit, the number of women on crews has crept up. But so far, the America's Cup -- sailed on the world's biggest, fanciest racing yachts in one-on-one matches -- has remained off limits. Although several owners' wives sailed in pre-World War II Cups, only three independent women sailors have participated in Cup trials in recent years. Was it the old saw that women bring bad luck on a boat? Or the fact that the brawn required to turn a 25-ton boat or hoist a 3,400-sq.-ft. sail is rare in females? Or the male clubbiness that excluded women even from the more cerebral positions of navigator and tactician? When the all-female team was announced, says Linda Lindquist, 32, who doubles as a sail-hoisting pitman and fund raiser, "men asked me, 'What happens when you are all at the same time of the month?' "

Whichever sex is at the helm, the margin of victory may depend more on technology than seamanship. If the Australians won in 1983 -- the first and only time a challenger has wrested away the Cup -- it was mostly because of their newfangled keels flanked by little wings to diminish underwater drag. If Koch, a multimillionaire with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T., trounced four-time winner Conner and the Italian finalist, Gardini, in the last Cup, it was because he built four boats only to settle on the one with the sleekest hull, stiffest mast and lightest sails made from a revolutionary carbon fiber/polymer blend. As Whitbread veteran Merritt Carey, one of the two self-described "bow chicks" on the women's team, says, "Even idiots sailing a fast boat every day can do a pretty good job."

Luckily for the women, Koch, reincarnated as the Daddy Warbucks of diversity, wants to provide them with the swiftest boat money can buy. The iconoclastic Kansan, heir to an oil fortune, spent $68 million to win the 1992 cup -- and he is passing on many of his assets, including his two best yachts as training vessels, a huge inventory of masts, sails, rigging and tools, and reams of computer, design and meteorological data. Koch also contributed $5 million in seed money -- a quarter of the women's budget -- to hire some 90 top-level coaches, engineers, fund raisers and public relations experts, as well as a former San Diego Padres trainer to whip them into shape.

While Koch, 54, says his motive is "breaking barriers" and showing "respect for women's competitive abilities," the venture neatly jibes with his need for a personal-image campaign. A bitter 10-year legal battle with two of his brothers over his share of Koch Industries, a $23 billion energy conglomerate, is likely to come before a jury this year in Kansas. Koch had no interest in another time-consuming try for the Cup himself, having & already proved to himself and the world that an inexperienced yachtsman could beat the pros. But after running TV spots about his 1992 win to boost his home-state standing, he could ill afford to abruptly abandon the sport. Moreover, Cup-related expenditures are tax-deductible. With market research showing waning interest in the event, a women's team was a way to do well by doing good. "The sport needed a shot in the arm," says coach Kimo Worthington. "It's boring to watch the same old guys going at it. The women make it interesting."

The 29-member team, of whom only 16 are allowed to sail the boat during a race, was chosen from 678 applicants after rigorous tryouts. Among them: eight Olympic athletes, two women who sailed through hurricane-force winds and icebergs in the Whitbread, a world-class weightlifter who coaches the University of Washington Huskies football team, a native Hawaiian who sailed a 60-ft. canoe using Polynesian wayfinding, an aerospace engineer, and three mothers of small children. As impressive and eclectic as the women are, however, only two are experienced in big-boat match racing. By contrast, virtually all the members of the men's teams have that critical background. "We're the underdogs," says helmsman Dawn Riley, "so we have to work 110% harder."

The women have been training in their San Diego boot camp since June -- six months longer than the men. Coach Worthington is hoping that the 10-hour days, which begin with one-armed pushups and a 105-min. weight-lifting and aerobic regime and continue with intensive tacking and jibing duels on Koch's two 1992 boats, will narrow the gap in strength and skill. "Men don't listen to coaches because their egos get in the way," he says. "But these women are so eager to learn. I get choked up thinking about how far they've come and how determined they are."

In November, the women showed their mettle at the International World Championships off San Diego, a warm-up for the Cup, finishing second only to the Australians. Conner and PACT 95, both sailing slower yachts, finished far behind. "We showed them they better take us seriously," says Olympic bronze medalist Jennifer Isler. Bill Trenkle, who runs Conner's sailing operations, admits as much. "We realize with a fast boat they'll be dangerous," he says. "Women love to beat men and men love to make fun of men who are beaten by women. If we get our butt kicked by a bunch of girls, Dennis knows it would be hard to live down."

* Conner, the world's most famous sailor, has been less than gracious. At a regatta dinner in Newport, Rhode Island, last August, he called the women's team "a bunch of lesbians," prompting team navigator Annie Nelson to douse him with her rum-and-coke. "He was way out of line," says Nelson. Trenkle, who was standing nearby, maintains that the comment was "locker-room humor. They were joking around." Many of the women were not amused. "Ninety percent of us are either married or have steady boyfriends, but who cares?" says mainsheet grinder Stephanie Armitage-Johnson.

On a recent training run, Carey, a ruddy-cheeked blond in a ponytail, shinnied 60 ft. up the mast, tools in hand, to tighten some screws while swinging in a harness high over the choppy seas. "This isn't a battle of the sexes," she said afterward. "This is about having fun." Squinting into the glare, she added: "And about winning."