Italians Conquer Worlds : Sailing: Cayard steers Il Moro di Venezia to lopsided victory.

SAN DIEGO â€”  The Italians aren’t any fun anymore.

Time was when they showed up for the America’s Cup with the best food, the best parties, the best sailing clothes, by Gucci--and bumbling crews and the slowest boats.

Now they’re taking it way too seriously. Now they’ve got good crews and fast boats.

Syndicate owner Raul Gardini was on board Saturday, smiling all the way, as Paul Cayard steered Il Moro di Venezia III (ITA-15) to a 1-minute, 7.9-second victory over New Zealand to win the first International America’s Cup Class World Championship, a prelude to the defense in 1992.

Meanwhile, a hired Texan, John Kolius, drove Il Moro di Venezia I (ITA-1)--supposedly the slow, backup boat--to a consolation, third-place victory over Chris Dickson’s Nippon Challenge by 5:10.2.

In winds ranging from 10 to 14 knots, Kolius sailed the 22.6-mile course a half-minute faster than New Zealand in the other race. With a billionaire to sponsor their program and an American to run it, the Italians are kicking tail for all those years of embarrassing themselves.

Mama mia! They want to win it.

“We’re in the race,” Cayard said.

Gardini, with Cayard translating, said it even stronger: “The cards are stacked against the defenders now.”

Cayard’s boat might have been even faster if the crew had had time to shake it down before the Worlds after Il Moro II lost its mast and disqualified itself.

None of Saturday’s boats will matter. They are only a part of the development programs and will be high and dry by the time the serious sailing starts with the challenger trials next January. Gardini is prepared to build as many Il Moros as his Montedison empire can produce until Cayard has one he is sure can win.

Also sobering is the realization that Il Moro has sailing talent to burn. After Il Moro II was dismasted, Cayard wasn’t sure he still wanted to enter two boats in the Worlds but did it for the sake of the crew.

“I wanted all 32 of my guys to have the opportunity to develop and improve,” he said.

And he didn’t keep all the best hands for himself--he didn’t create “A” and “B” crews.

“We divided them up on an equal basis,” Cayard said. “We wanted both boats to be competent. We didn’t want to stack one boat.”

Clearly, the Italians are bent on breaking America’s Cup traditions--their own and the one that says a red boat has never won the Victorian silver ewer.

New Zealand also has red boats and won the fleet-racing phase. The top two will be tough to overtake, perhaps even for the defenders--Dennis Conner and Bill Koch’s America-3 team. They are well-funded and have been up and running longer, except for Nippon, which learned how much it has yet to learn.

And the challengers certainly aren’t inclined to help the defenders catch up with cooperative test sailing over the next few months.

Rod Davis, an American who sailed New Zealand’s boat again Saturday, said, “It’s not the job of the challengers to help the defenders of the America’s Cup.”

Davis, the world’s No. 2-ranked match racer behind Dickson, was forced into a bad start by Cayard and never recovered. Davis initiated tacking duels on the first two windward legs--22 tacks on the first, 30 on the second--but managed to close only on the first downwind leg when he reduced Cayard’s lead to 25.8 seconds.

Cayard was gracious.

“The wind god was looking down on Il Moro di Venezia today,” he said.

Nobody could make a grudge out of this. Cayard and Davis are pals going back to their days on Defender in the ’83 Cup trials, and Davis will coach Italy’s Admiral’s Cup team--the world championship of ocean racing--this year.

Unlike Cayard, Davis speaks little Italian but said, “I can sail in Italian. I just can’t order a meal in Italian.”

Kolius maintained a comfortable lead over Dickson and was home free after Dickson wrapped his spinnaker around the bow when the crew dropped it at the fifth mark, causing a considerable delay.

What it all meant might not become clear until next year, but there were no big surprises.

Conner, although dropping out of the sailoffs after placing third in the fleet racing, did what anyone with a proven crew, proven designers and 18 years of Cup experience would be expected to do.

Nippon had been rated fast, but its crew, despite two years of drilling before the mast under Dickson, had not been tested under fire, and its boat with the forward rudder wasn’t the same after losing its mast in the opening race.

The 75-foot carbon-fiber boats proved as flimsy as feared, and Saturday’s semifinal match races offered a foreboding of some long, boring, lopsided races next year.

The new three-lap course with the “Z-leg” reaches in the middle produced the anticipated parades with few tactics but lots of sail testing.

The event also was a test of men, as well as boats.

Cayard said, “Winning is a confidence builder,” and the Italians might have needed some of that after their past Cup performances.

Cayard said half of his crew experienced those letdowns, and there are so many other major sailing opportunities in Italy that he had to sell his program hard.

“Maybe the lack of past success has precluded some of them from committing to it,” he said. “But I think right now our team is pretty formidable. Next year we’ll find out just how formidable it is.”