At 91, Still Racing After All These Years

© Herb McCormick

At 91, Jack Sutphen, who served as Dennis Conner's sparring partner for multiple America's Cup campaigns, is still going strong.

    
For a decade after the war, Jack refereed NCAA college hockey games all over the east, even in Madison Square Garden. But he'd picked up a thing or two racing against the likes of Arthur Knapp back in Larchmont, and that experience led him to a job at the iconic sail loft of Ratsey & Lapthorn in City Island, New York. In that capacity he got his first taste of the America's Cup, fashioning the sail inventory for Weatherly in the 1958 Cup series.
    
For the 1974 America's Cup, he'd graduated from the loft to the boat, as the alternate skipper to Bob Bavier in the Courageous camp. Things were different back then.
    
"I think we were the last of the amateur crews," said Jack. "We didn't get paid anything other than shirts and socks and ties and jackets. We lived in Hammersmith Farm in Newport (the childhood home of Jackie Kennedy and the "summer White House" during her husband's administration). Every night we ate at a huge table in jackets and ties. Can you imagine? Bavier used to play tennis in the mornings before going out to practice. That's the honest truth. Can you imagine?"
    
The summer went reasonably well until the very end, when Bavier and Suthpen were bounced off the boat in favor of Ted Hood and a young California hotshot named Conner. "I think (Dennis) felt bad about that," said Sutphen. Whatever the reason, the uneasy incident would come to forge a surprising bond, for when Conner decided to launch his own campaign in 1980, he called upon Sutphen to join his team.
    
His stories of life with Dennis are endless and fascinating. "He really lived that 'no excuse to lose' credo," said Sutphen. "As a sailor, he was ahead of his time. He might be the greatest ever."