The Kingston Whig-Standard from Kingston, Ontario, Canada • 45

TK Wljifl -Stanbarb SPORTS KINGSTON ONTARIO WEDNESDAY AUGUST IB 1982 i Budget: ON THE INSIDE Sports Data Page 46 NHL agreement Page 47 Verona wins opener Page 48 RENfACAR 2268 Princess St 546-3231 Oo Witfi Budft Waafcand Spaciad WE FEATURE FORD AND OTHER FINE CARS i -v' PAGE 45 VJ Today PR Canadians is something ignore Northerly winds turn Tornado leet around Australian skipper catches shift just right By TIM dORDANIER 1 Whig-Standard Staff Writer Mitch Booth had his sights set on a finish somewhere in the top 15 in the first race of the World Tornado Championships at Portsmouth Olympic Harbor yesterday But a sudden change in the unpredictable northerly winds about halfway through the 32 kilometre race however gave Booth a completely different view of things Booth a 19-year-old boat builder from Sydney Australia was wallowing around in the low of the 64-boat fleet in the early part of the race and had a good look at what was happening up front A surprising and drastic 30-to-40 degree shift of wind which caught practically everyone ahead of Booth off guard came just at the right moment for Booth to make his move quickly to the top of the fleet and give him a 10-second margin of victory Trouble starting fleet The seven-race event continues this afternoon with the second race scheduled to start at 1 Shifty winds making lining up in any semblance of order nearly impossible held up the start of race for about an hour and a half Auckland NZ sailor Brian Peet winner of practice race and sixth-place finisher at the recent pre-Olympic regatta at Long Beach Calif placed second with crew Chris Timms also of Auckland while former US Olympic Tornado coach Roland Smith of Minnescah Kan and crew John Houlton of Tampa Fla were third Defending Canadian Olympic-training Regatta Kingston (CORK) champion Michael Zuteck of Houston Tex with crew Buddy Brown was fourth followed by Tobias Neuhann and crew Franz Reiter of Segler West Germany Top Canadian in the fleet was national sailing team member Larry Woods of Winona OnL with crew Roger Walker of Crystal Beach OnL who finished sixth that probably be in the top 15 said Booth who has 26-year-old economics student Julian Melling also of Sydney as his crew top 15 were just so close together though that we could have ended up first or 15th All the boats in about the top 15 had the same speed "We have any special advantage on anyone in the top boats We were just a bit lucky in that by being back in the race we could see what the front guys were doing and make our moves accordingly got the good wind on the first windward return on the downwind added Booth the 1980 Nacra champion leaders picked the right wind at the time but then ft changed abpiit 20 degrees and a line of wind was coming in stronger and we were the first ones to get there just happened to be on the right side of the fleet and took full advantage of the shift and passed a lot of One of the boats Booth left in his wake was Neuhann sailing with crew Franz Reiter burst into an early lead but as he expected maintain a firm grip on it knew we keep said Neuhann a three-time Euro-' peari Tornado champion who finished fifth yesterday was very tricky sailing out there and we knew it was gbing to be that way from the forecast We knew nobody would keep his lead for very Final lag move Booth however was able to hold his lead with some nifty sailing on the final leg of the race could go from first to fifth very quickly out there but on the last leg I happened to cover as many boats as possible and held them off" said Booth The boat Booth was sailing was a home-built model that he assembled in Australia in just nine days in late July Although he has built catamarans for a living since he was 15 Booth had never attempted to make a tornado a 20-foot Olympic-class catamaran worked 15 hours a day to do he said tested it the day before we put it on the ship to go to Long Beach and raced it in the pre-Olympics there We had a bit of a gear failure though and the we finished 21st The win yesterday has chased any doubts Booth may have had about his boat out of his mind completely Mora confidence gives us a bit more confidence" admitted whose first competitive race with Melling as his crew came at Long Beach too "We truthfully didn't expect to win but now we know we can The best race we had at Long Beach was a fifth and all the others were pretty much the same the conditions are totally different now This boat seems to go better in flat water like we had today" i 3 'v 4 IPs l-'-t 4 av -r Australian skipper Mitch Booth sailed to NOTEBOOK Some big names failed to make the top five yesterday Defending World champion and 1982 North American European and pre-Olympic champion Randy Smyth of Huntington Beach California sailing with crew Jay Glaser placed eighth Smyth was second at the last makr before being caught in the wind shift Reg White of Colne Great Britain two-time World champion and 1976 Olympic champion at Kingston finished seventh while other two-time winners of the World title Jorg Spengler of Noris West Germany and Viktor Potapov of the Soviet Union sailed to lth-and 15th-place finishes respectively Only two casualties were recorded on the first day of competition The first boat to retire was that being raced by Yves Loday of Car-nac France A third-place finisher at last World championships Loday had a line from his main sail It usually happens sometime in January Kingston Canadians invariably winning enough for some of the followers and just as invariably the wolves are dispatched to the door of general manager-coach Jim Morrison As a fellow been around professional or major junior hockey for most of his life Morrison told everybody heard it all before it was one of the hazards of the job and it bother him You believed most of it Now Morrison admits the rumors get to him no wonder Pucks won't be dumped on the ice of the Ontario Hockey League club's first training damp session for two weeks and during a summer of speculation the vultures have been circling for months not entirely Unexpected When the big game in town' people talk about you in season and out When people are trying to buy the hockey team the rumor mill gets fired When the club executive says it will keep everyone informed and then the gossip flows freely When you get right down to it a few facts a little background and some personal bias bring a nice cozy scenario into focus for the rumor-mongers Consider this There was a great hue and cry for Morrison to step aside after the bowed out of last playoffs in three games In June he relinquished -his coaching position to concentrate solely on the general manager's job MORRISON That quell the bloodthirsty mob Amid speculation that the club was about to be sold there arose a rumor that if it was the contracts of Morrison and new coach Rod Graham wouldn't be binding upon the new owners Sold house If you believed that one hearing that Morrison sold his house would make you certain that he wasn't happy with having to step down from coaching supposedly taking a fair pay cut and a flimsy contract in the process and was ready to move on The fact that virtually no announcements of an official or pubic relations vein were forthcoming from the team for almost two months would confirm it for a skeptic The only thing missing from this plot was accuracy As it turns out Morrison has sold his house It was peddled primarily because his youngest son Craig was drafted as a 16-year-old and will be leaving home this winter A house can be big and onely when three-quarters of it is empty on a one-year leasein his present accomodation but that's not because ready to slip out of town He and his wife Wanda have never lived in an apartment before and don't know if like it That's pretty straightforward One rumor dispelled In his office the other day Morrison spoke of moving on He talked of receiving offers in past seasons some from pro clubs some from other teams in Ontario Some were impressive tome would fcLAUDE SCILLEY have put him in a better financial situation but he likes it here When Morrison a man with no other local ties to keep him here and one not prone to braggadocio says: think be on the street very long even if I was let go" you tend to believe him There it is the best of the scut-tlebut and the response So what? Maybe the content of the rumors is not at question here but their very preponderance Kingston cosmopolitan as it may be for a city of its size is still small-townish in that people tend to know a lot of everybody else's business In bigger places like Toronto Quebec City Pittsburgh and Baltimore Morrison was never exposed to that probably went on just the same but with so many people it acted like a he says never heard so many rumors" Information vaccuum Maybe rumors germinate a little more freely in a small city but they certainly thrive in an information vaccuum Essentially the environment In which Canadians operate easy for the media to dismiss no word for two months because nobody with the team has ever been known as a publicity hound Representatives of the media cater to you when you put 3000 people in the building twice a week but I though Canadians are still the biggest game in town not that much bigger anymore and PR is something they ignore the way they have in the past For instance: Two years ago when Canadians dealt a defenceman named Scott Clements to Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds at the end of a training camp it embarrassed a reporter to have to admit to people in the Sault three days later that no he heard about it Kingston has the only press room in the league where up-to-date statistics are not regularly available to out-of-town reporters It has the only box in the league where on some nights statisticians the public address announcer and press box attendant take a seat before some members of the working press It's very nice for members of the executive to say the team isn't for sale It's misleading for them to say it when it's true only in the strictest sense and they are in fact entertaining offers as was the case in the spring and could still very well be the case today for all we know In fairness the team puts on coffee and danish spreads once a week during the season which is nice in an informal way but not much ever comes out of them in terms of news and a reporter with a novel story idea going to pursue it in front of his competition Perhaps the point is this Rumor and denial stories are boring Writers like to write them subjects like to face them and people usually like tp read them If a little more information was dispensed maybe we could forget-them sary to fulfil its voided commitment to the 1983 Memorial Ladds -said Frank Bonello general manager of the Toronto Marlboros' said no agreement creates the possibility of the three major Junior leagues (Western Quebfec and Ontario) playing fgr a national championship other than the Memorial Cup Earlier Ladds said no affiliation agreement would mean the OHL cutting ties with the CAHA Member teams participate in the OHA by paying an annual entry fee ranging between $50 and $200 de- pending on category In addition to the entry fee members also send the association 7V4 per cent of the tnoney from playoff ticket for all preliminary playoff rounds and 15 per cent of their gross gates in all championship series Ladds added the association will continue to administer CAHA hockey programs If :5 Avt Ji jf? 7 A -tt -o- -r MCWI victory in opening Tornado race break about 10 minutes into the race when he was sitting in second place could have been prevented but the boat is three years old and there are so many thing to check that you tell what is going to said Loday of the French Sailing Federation-owned boat that was shipped to Kingston for him to use Lloyd Lamsee sailing under the flag of Trinidad withdrew after his boat capsized on the fifth leg The 41-year-old Toronto hair dresser sailing with crew Chris Easton of Toronto was trying to avoid another boat when his boat tipped over "It was a very stupid said Lamsee who had to withdraw from CORK on the second day of competition last year when his boat received about a one-metre gash in one hull following a collision was in the top middle of the fleet when it happened a little bit disappointing but our throwout race The victory went to Jeff Reardon 5-2 The Expos tied the game 2-2 in the second game on AI RBI single in the ninth inning The Expos' first run came in the fifth when Chris Speier belted his fourth homer Dawson got the Expos rolling in the opener with his 15th homer in the first inning The fielding blunders for Atlanta began in the second Carter started a four-run uprising when he beat out a hit to the left of the mound becoming the first player in Expos' history to attain 1000 career hits Elsewhere the Cubs had a chance to break the tie with Los Angeles in the bottom of the eighth Larry Bowa singled and one out later Leon Durham doubled off the right-field wall but Bowa was nailed trying to score on a relay throw from Pedro Guerrero to second baseman Steve Sax to catcher Mike Scioscla The game was to be resumed today before the regularly-scheduled contest Vem Ruhle fired a five-hitter and Tony Scott and Ray Knight each drove in a run to lead Houston past Philadelphia Ruhle 7-8 struck out four and walked none Keith Hernandez said he was in no mood to be choosy while at bat with the bases loaded In the ninth inning for SL Louis "I was Just looking for the ball" said Hernandez who singled on the first pitch to give the Cardinals the victory "In a tight game like that I wasn't going to be falling Hernandez's hit raised his runs-batted-in total for the season to 72 including 17 game-winners The triumph gave the Cards a two-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East Jason Thompson belted a two-run homer and right-hander Rick Rhoden held San Francisco to just two hits to lead Pittsburgh over the Giants Expos too much power for Chief Noc-A-Homa Financial dispute with OHA forces OHL to go on its own ting and I won't In other action it was Houston Astros 2 Philadelphia Phillies 0 St Louis Cardinals 3 San Diego Padres 2 Pittsburgh Pirates 4 San Francisco Giants 1 and Cincinnati Reds 9 New York Mets 2 Los Angeles played a 1-1 tie with Chicago Cubs in a 17-inning game at Wri-gley Field that was called by darkness Jaya back In last In the American League Toronto Blue Jays returned to last place in the east division dropping a doubleheader to Cleveland Indians 6-5 and 9-5 In other games it Angels 10 Boston Red Sox 2 Oakland 10 Milwaukee Brewers 6 Kansas City Royals 8 New York Yankees 4 Baltimore Orioles 8 Minnesota Twins 4 Texas Rangers 4 Chicago White Sox 3 and Seattle Mariners splitting with Detroit Tigers winning the opener 5-4 and dropping the second game 3-2 It only that the Braves lost again but the way that they lost their recent pair In the first game they made five errors allowing the Expos eight unearned runs In the nightcap relief ace Gene Garber was unable to hold a 2-1 lead in the ninth Warren run-scoring single in the 10th inning off Garber gave Expos the second-game win Andre Dawson drove in three runs with a homer and single as the Expos romped to the opening-game victory With the sweep Atlanta now has lost 14 of 15 games and 18 of 20 falling 2V4 games behind Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West Division Doug Flynn opened the 10th inning of the second game with a walk and was forced on a grounder by Brad Mills Tim Raines singled to send Mills to third to chase Rick Mahler 8-9 Cromartie then greet Garber with his game-winning hit THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The management of Atlanta Braves allowed team mascot Chief Noc-A-Homa to put his teepee up again at Atlanta Stadium in hopes of changing the bad luck of late It didn't help The staggering National League team continued to fumble away baseball games left and right drop Expos' Gary Carter arrives safe at first on ping a doubleheader to the Montreal Expos 13-7 and 3-2 in 10 innings Tuesday night That spelled their 18th loss in their last 20 games and dropped them 214 games behind the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers you get said Atlanta manager Joe Torre "It gets more frustrating 1 wasn't brought up quit- an Atlanta error TORONTOThtCmMfiProi The Ontario Hockqy League which consists of the top junior ubs in the province will not be under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Hockey Association for the 1982-83 season because of a dispute over financial terms OHA president Brent Ladds has announced Ladds said in a statement that Allowing negotiations during the ast few months the OHL had re-ected the final proposal for affiliation agreement The OHL ms 15 teams He noteid that the board of governors is concerned about the overall effects of the move on amateur hockey including the association's obligations to the Memorial Cup playoffs where the hampions of three major junior eagues in Canada compete The OHA will meet with the CAHA (Canadian Amateur Hockey Association) in the next week or so to discuss the alternatives neces i i i' i f-1 -VrV rfjltrf4lj4iirl MjdrW ti 1 --f tfr' nV -iWyTi ir 11:1 -1 fc 'f f'- 1 L--.