Current Biography Excerpts: Boating

CONNER, DENNISCONNER, DENNIS
1943- Yacht racer.

The America's Cup, the most coveted of regatta prizes, is "the holy grail" to Dennis Conner, a yachtsman of middle-class origins who pursues the blueblood sport with a full-time dedication and aggressiveness that offends some of its more gentrified participants. Conner, who has been winning world match races since 1973, successfully defended the America's Cup as skipper of Freedom in 1980. Three years later he became the first American in 132 years to lose the Cup, to Australia, and he reclaimed the trophy as the skipper of Stars & Stripes '87 in February 1987. Not the least of Conner's talents is his ability to organize around him a winning team--or syndicate, as it is known in the sport--of financial backers, yacht designers, high-tech scientists, crewmen, and others, and to infuse that team with his own enthusiasm. For him, leaving a single "stone unturned" is giving oneself "an excuse to lose." "I don't like to sail," he told Tom Callahan of Time (February 9, 1987). "I like to compete. I guess I don't dislike it, but my sailing is just the bottom line, like adding up the score in bridge. My real interest is in the tremendous game of life....Funding, staffing, operating, planning, logistics, everything--isn't that the game of life?" Because of the "amateur" nature of the sport, Conner classifies yacht racing as his "hobby," despite the time and energy he devotes to it; his livelihood is a wholesale and retail carpeting and drapery business in San Diego.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1987 Current Biography Yearbook.

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