The Gorman report

Ed Gorman reports from Auckland on the forthcoming quarter final matches between GBR70 and USA77

Elsewhere in the fleet, it comes as perhaps no surprise that after only two days of two-boat testing, Prada have decided to continue with ITA74 at the expense of the heavily re-worked ITA80 for their big match against Alinghi which is sticking to SUI64. Apart from Conner, the only other team to make a change is Peter Gilmour's OneWorld which will be giving USA65 a run-out against Oracle BMW Racing.

Finally what about Mr Conner himself? He has played it pretty low-key in the build-up to the quarters, partly because he spent much of the change-over racing in the Etchells Worlds, complete with a few of his Stars & Stripes weather boats. One leading American journalist put it to Read that the idea of syndicate head Conner going off to race a 30ft keelboat while his team was left to struggle through its own big problems in the Louis Vuitton Cup was a bit much. Not a bit of it parried Read who claims it is important for Conner to get his own sailing in order to keep a clear perspective.

So what is his role? "Dennis is a constant voice of common sense," said Read. "He really hasn't had much to do with tweaking the boat but when the master speaks, we all listen. You have so much time and so much pressure to perform in these events that you tend to over-analyse and sometimes he pulls us back from that and says: 'Hey guys, this is a boat race - this is how a boat race is won and lost - let's get back to basics.'"

As usual there are all sorts of rumours. Conner said this, did that, cooked this for the team after racing and so on. One recent one which needs a thorough checking out, is that he is growing tomato plants in the Stars & Stripes compound. If true, this is probably an America's Cup first...