Commoners can only laugh at Cup goings-on

Who could have dreamed that in an event contested by some of the greatest minds behind Microsoft and Oracle, the only clear winner would be Iomega?

That's where the chase for the America's Cup stands at the conclusion of the great Sailing Witch Trials of '02, wherein the boys on OneWorld's blue boats became the first people in the history of the world to be convicted of felony possession of a Zip disk.

Alas, said disk contained files with design information from New Zealand's previous generation of America's Cup yachts. Never mind that its owner, former Team NZ designer Ian Mitchell, swore under oath he never bothered to unzip said Zip. Or that the Seattle syndicate, in yet another audit of employee possessions in previous lives (sample written question: "Are you now or have you ever been within 100 meters of design secrets for a gaudy, overpriced Prada gown?") came upon the revelation itself and fessed up to the Cup's Supreme Exalted Kangaroo Court over the weekend.

OneWorld was on trial for its life here, and a punishment simply had to be meted out. So it was: One penalty point in each succeeding series the Seattle group competes, up to and including the America's Cup.

That means instead of winning four races over Prada's Luna Lawya, its current semifinals opponent, OneWorld needs five.

Fortunately, the blue boat already has one in the can after beating Prada by 47 seconds yesterday — raising its (on-water) record to 9-0 against all sniveling courtroom opponents.

But the penalty might become a death sentence in the next round, when and if the Seattle team advances to face hated Oracle, which lost its first semifinal race to Switzerland's Alinghi yesterday by 1 minute, 11 seconds.

All of this in spite of the fact that every accusation brought by the Tattletale Trio — Prada, the supposedly above-reproach Kiwis and that historically at-or-below-reproach shameless self-promoter, Dennis Conner — was successfully refuted at the Sailing Witch Trials.

At least now, at what should be the glorious height of competition for sailing's greatest prize (the Duck Dodge notwithstanding), the sailing and non-sailing public can finally once again cast its eyes to the Southern Hemisphere, survey the proceedings and exclaim in unison: "Huh?"

Thanks to the likes of Conner, who for the record has done a lot for sailing (much of it bad), the America's Cup remains what it always has been to the normal world: ridiculously unfathomable.

From this point on, all you have to do to advance in the Iomega Automatic Backup Cup challenger's trial is follow some new, cappuccino-clear rules of engagement:

Basically, you need to win four races. Unless your boat is blue, and recently has been assessed the Special Zip Disk Penalty, in which case you'll need to win five of the seven (eight? nine? 11?) All this is assuming, of course, that some whiny loser doesn't produce, midrace, previously undisclosed evidence alleging one of your designers to be in illegal possession of a Pentium 286 once used by an employee of America True to play Windows solitaire, in which case your boat may or may not be assessed a penalty lap around the island of Tasmania or Larry Ellison's ego, whichever is deemed of greater relative mass at the time by the group of crumpled rummies who run this ridiculous event.

The point is simple. The America's Cup, when you strip away the three-quarters-of-a-billion dollars(!), the weather gear, the carbon fiber, the deck shoes and discarded lime rinds, really is one of the world's longest-running guffaws — an event with about as much to do with justice as the U.S. tax code. Take it for what it is: Big Time Wrestling for rich folks.

And a fairly rich diversion for the rest of us. Consider the good news in the wake of the weekend high-court ruling:

• Most of the clowns are now off the stage. Conner, who has spent way more time in a courtroom than the president of the United States spent in college, is history. R.I.P., T.D.C.

• OneWorld will now liven up this funeral procession by running from here on out on something very much lacking in Auckland to date: pure spite.

Informing the world about the health of oceans was nice, but yearning to see the Italian boys across the way not only lose, but actually sink to the bottom of the ocean, makes for way better TV.

• There's still plenty of time left for protest flags and other traditional sailing maneuvers, perhaps including wireless transmission interceptions (what possible good is a syndicate owned by Craig McCaw if you can't get total access to every cellphone conversation in the Southern Hemisphere?). Imagine how fun this little NASCAR-on-caviar event will get when things get really serious.

That's it for now. We're going to check our old TRS-80 for possible secret Team NZ Kiwi fruit-salad recipes.

Please forward any complaints to our lawyers.