CONNER, Dennis W.

(b. 16 September 1942 in San Diego, California), professional sailboat racer and motivational speaker, and four-time winner of the America's Cup who is known for his prominent role in that yacht race's growth as an international event.

Conner brought world attention to the America's Cup by losing the three-foot, ornate silver trophy to the Australian challenger in 1983. He was the skipper of the New York Yacht Club's sloop Liberty. The loss broke the longest winning streak in sports, twenty-five matches over 132 years, and transformed the America's Cup from a summer endeavor for amateur sportsmen into a corporate-sponsored, professionally crewed show of technology, teamwork, tactics, and lavish budgets.

Conner has asserted throughout his career that there was "no excuse to lose," and used the expression as the title of his first book. Following discouraging defeat, he swept the next America's Cup in 1987 aboard Stars and Stripes in four straight races in the turbulent waters of Western Australia. The Cup came back to the United States—to Conner's hometown of San Diego, California, not the traditional East Coast setting. Nevertheless, New York City gave the crew a ticker-tape parade, and President Ronald W. Reagan welcomed them to the White House. Conner became known as "Mr. America's Cup."

Conner has been on winning boats four times in the America's Cup: first as tactician aboard Courageous in 1974, and as skipper in 1980, 1987, and 1988. He lost the Cup twice, in 1983 and 1995. In 1992 and 2000 his crew was eliminated before the finals, and he has committed to a challenge in 2003.

No one can win the Cup without first winning the large corporate sponsors whose support is also sought by the other syndicates. The budget for Conner's 1983 defense in Liberty was just under $5 million. To win back the Cup in 1987, Conner's budget more than tripled. The money was needed to design, construct, and test a new boat, and to prepare for the unfamiliar venue awaiting the crew halfway around the world. For the 2003 campaign, the goal was set at $40 million. To gain recognition in the business world, Conner became a corporate motivational speaker, using examples from his successes and failures as material.

The America's Cup has often generated heated competition and intrigue off the water as well as on. Normally three to four years elapse between races, but the defeated New Zealanders from 1987 caught San Diego off guard with a 1988 challenge based on the historical documents of the Cup rather than accepted practice. The Mercury Bay Boating Club wanted the Americans to race in the largest single-masted boat permitted and in the minimum time allowed for preparation. The challenging boat was to be over 130 feet long, twice the length of the Twelve-Meter Class boats used for thirty years. San Diego had ten months to field a defender—too short a time to design and build such a boat. Conner countered with a boat half the length, but with two hulls and a fraction of the weight. The catamaran Stars and Stripes easily won, yet the legal disputes over the intentions of the original Deed of Gift continued in court. On the final appeal, San Diego Yacht Club retained the Cup. Conner had learned that actions ashore can decide the contest.

After 1992 Conner chose to concentrate his efforts as chairman of Dennis Conner Sports, his sports marketing firm. He picked a younger proven skipper to take the helm of the new 75-foot America's Cup Class entry while he looked for the competitive advantage on shore. In the 1995 defender's series, the other American teams allowed Stars and Stripes to continue racing when on the verge of elimination. They allowed a second chance, and were beaten by Team Dennis Conner. However, the New Zealand challenger dominated in the finals and took the Cup down under once again.

Conner's derogatory public comments have tarnished his reputation. He has called certain foreign competition "cheaters" and "losers" in press conferences. After his sensational loss in 1983, he blamed the New York Yacht Club, which had held the Cup since 1851, for not following through with the effort to disqualify the Australian challenger for its innovative winged keel. International measurers had approved the keel, and the Club officials chose not to cancel racing on hearsay that the Australians used a design prohibited by the rules. Even with a slower boat, Conner won three races before Australia took the series.

Conner does not have the persona of a popular hero. He often appears preoccupied or ill at ease in public, yet even the Australians and New Zealanders loved him as the underdog. When he sails, his tanned face is characterized by heavy-lidded eyes, a double chin, and smears of zinc oxide. When the media has disparaged his actions, he has usually ignored the negative publicity. His strength is making winning against the odds look easy by focusing on thorough boat and equipment preparation and a willingness to build a team of specialists who know more than he does. As a result, Conner has excelled in many forms of sailboat racing.

The America's Cup eliminations and finals are a series of match races, one boat against one boat. The skipper needs the mind of a chess master on a fluid board. In other world championships, Conner outmaneuvered dozens of the world's finest skippers in vying for favorable wind and position. In 1971 at the age of twenty-eight, Conner won the Star Class World Championships. The second time he won the Star Worlds, in 1977, he took five firsts in a fleet of eighty-nine boats, an unequaled record. He won a bronze medal in the Tempest Class in the 1976 Olympic Games. In the 1990s Conner twice fielded competitive entries of the grueling nine-month, 25,000-mile Whitbread Round the World Race, although he sailed the boats only on individual legs of the races.

Conner has written, "To me, luck is work, preparation, ability, attitude, confidence and skill." He hones those elements in himself and in his team. He inspires enduring loyalty, but with sailing as his top priority, his family and his drapery business, which he entered after leaving San Diego State University, have to manage without his day-to-day presence.

Conner's account of his early racing career, written with John Rousmaniere, is No Excuse to Lose: Winning Yacht Races with Dennis Conner (1978). Conner describes winning back the America's Cup in Comeback: My Race for the America's Cup (1987), written with Bruce Stannard. Conner and Michael Levitt share valuable instructional insights in Sail Like a Champion (1992), and Learn to Sail (1994), and present an overview of America's Cup history in The America's Cup: The History of Sailing's Greatest Competition in the Twentieth Century (1998). Conner discusses his business philosophy and management tips in The Art of Winning (1998), written with Edward Claflin.

Sheila McCurdy