Congressional Cup : Owen Is Defender; Gilmour One to Beat

Britain’s Eddie Owen, who was to sailing last year what Al Unser Sr. was to auto racing, will open defense of his Congressional Cup championship today in the 24th running of the world’s premier match-racing event at Long Beach.

As Unser won the 1987 Indianapolis 500 after arriving at the track without a ride. Similarly, Owen had no boat until Ireland’s Harold Cudmore decided to take a hike in the Himalayas rather than defend his ’86 Congressional title.

Before Cudmore’s victory, no foreigner had won the event. Now, they seem to be on a roll.

The favorite is Australia’s Peter Gilmour, the former hard-sailing Kookaburra helmsman who has swept the first three of eight World Cup events, and Owen must be rated close behind.

Since his Long Beach win, Owen has been second in three match-racing events and third and fourth in two others, dogging Gilmour on the water and in the protest hearing room.

There will be no protest hearings in this event, which will introduce instant, on-the-water judging to the World Cup.

Nevertheless, said Peter Isler, a rival from San Diego: “When they meet, it’s usually fireworks.”

Gilmour and Owen are scheduled to meet in the second round of races today.

When Gilmour won the Nippon Cup, Owen said: “Every race we had with him we were overlapped at every mark.

“We were a bit unlucky in Nippon. We broke a jib sheet as we came into the last weather mark and had to tack away and re-tie the sheet. By that time, he’d come in and just got inside us.”

Gilmour won the race and the event by a boat length.

Owen, 38, was a part of Cudmore’s America’s Cup effort a year ago. He steered the eliminated White Crusader to victory in the consolation race after the trial rounds but wasn’t taken seriously as a world-class competitor until his win at Long Beach.

He won his first three matches, dropped two, then turned giant killer. In his last four races, he rolled over three America’s Cup sailors--Iain Murray, Chris Dickson and Isler--plus Olympic Soling gold medalist Robbie Haines.

Then he went to New Zealand and finished second to America’s Rod Davis in the Citizens Cup, cementing his new-found status.

“It was kind of important that we put in a good result in New Zealand, because otherwise (the Congressional) would have been a one-time fluke,” Owen said.

Besides Gilmour, Owen’s toughest competition should come from Isler, former America II skipper John Kolius and two-time Congressional winner Dennis Durgan.

John Bertrand, the Olympic Finn silver medalist who was Tom Blackaller’s tactician on San Francisco’s USA 12-meter at Fremantle, is the dark-horse of the field as a first-time entrant.

Others are Bill Lynn, the youngest at 25; Mike Elias, who won a sail-off to represent the host Long Beach Yacht Club; Greg Tawaststjerna, who was tactician on Canada II at Fremantle, and Kazunori Komatsu, the first Japanese to compete in the event.

The round-robin schedule runs through Saturday with races scheduled to start at 11 a.m., although they seldom do because of unsettled wind conditions. All will sail pretuned Catalina 38s, switching boats after each day’s competition.

After Tuesday’s practice races, the skippers and judges voted to change the penalty in the on-the-water judging system from a simple jib drop to a 270-degree turn. In other words, while heading up wind a boat must switch from one tack to the other by taking the long way around.