Young America

Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes handed PACT 95's faltering Young America its second straight loss yesterday in the America's Cup defender finals off San Diego. Stars & Stripes protected the favored right side of the race course at the start and took a lead it never relinquished, winning by 1 minute, 15 seconds. Conner, a three-time America's Cup winner, finished the semifinals with three straight losses and survived only because of a compromise among the three defense syndicates.

In an effort to restart the baseball strike talks, the owners' negotiating team will meet Thursday in Washington with special mediator W.J. Usery. Speaking on the condition he not be identified, a management official confirmed the meeting yesterday and said events of no great significance were expected. "It's just a meeting to look everyone in the eye and say, 'You've got to get this settled for the good of the country,' " the official said. Owners broke off talks Dec. 22 and implemented their salary-cap proposal the following day. The sides haven't met since.

Penn State quarterback Kerry Collins was honored yesterday as the Maxwell Football Club's college football player of the year. Penn State coach Joe Paterno finished ahead of Nebraska's Tom Osborne to win the club's award for college coach of the year. On the professional level, New England Patriots coach Bill Parcells and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young were the winners of the pro coach and pro player of the year awards. Paterno, Parcells and Young all were unable to attend the club's 58th annual awards ceremony yesterday, said club president Ron Jaworski.

The Smithsonian Institution's American Art Museum in Washington, formerly the National Museum of American Art, closed last year so its historic building could undergo extensive renovations. Rather than put all of its collection in storage, the museum has organized eight thematic exhibitions that will travel to 70 cities through 2003, when the building is scheduled to reopen. One of these shows, "Young America," has come to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. It consists of 54 paintings and sculptures dating from the mid-18th century to just after the Civil War, by some of this country's most famous artists.

No one has ever put a U.S. defender in as big a hole as Team New Zealand has Dennis Conner three races into the America's Cup. Black Magic 1 continued to cast its awesome spell over the world's best- known sailor, beating Conner's borrowed Young America by one minute, 51 seconds yesterday. For the first time in 144 years, a foreign yacht is up, 3-0, against America's best. The America's Cup is a best-of-nine series. Conner is two losses away from losing the Cup for the first time since 1983, when he lost a 3-1 lead to Australia II in the race, then best-of-seven.

Raymond Floyd missed three birdie tries as the stakes and the tension mounted in the Senior Skins Game, then rolled in an 8-footer at No. 17 to win the richest hole - $290,000 - in skins history yesterday in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. The birdie putt came after Arnold Palmer had missed from 10 feet and Jack Nicklaus from 14 feet at the par-4, 411-yard 17th hole and gave Floyd the Senior Skins title for the second consecutive year. Floyd also led the first day of the 1995 tournament, with $130,000.

HE WAS VOTED "Most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" by his high-school classmates. But Dick Clark did much more than that. He sold America on a kit bag of rowdy trouble and seductive pleasures. And he did so fordecades —from those lurid "Great Balls of Fire" goosed by Jerry Lee Lewis and the hip, grinding come-ons to do "The Twist" evoked by Chubby Checker, to the coded drug-'n'-revolution messages he let fly on national TV from the Jefferson Airplane, and the totally tarty aura of Madonna that became America's obsession.

Dennis Conner has received permission to switch boats for the upcoming America's Cup final against Team New Zealand. Conner, who sailed Stars & Stripes during the defender series, has been granted use of PACT 95's Young America, which had the best overall record of the three U.S. syndicates. The America's Cup Trustees' Committee yesterday ruled in favor of Conner in response to a protest from Team New Zealand. The committee cited the mutual- consent clause that allows a team to enter two new boats in the competition.

YOUNG AMERICANS have a lot at stake in Tuesday's presidential election, but nothing is more important than ensuring enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Mentioned repeatedly during the first two presidential debates, "Obamacare" is now the subject of intense, and annoying, campaign advertisements. But lost amid all this ominous talk of mandates, fines and government takeovers is a clear understanding of the ACA's many benefits to those of us under 40. I hope the possibility of a potential Romney administration repealing the ACA elicits serious concern, because the ACA is vital to the health of our country.

Woody Stephens and Philip Gleaves are the friendliest of competitors. When he worked for Stephens, Gleaves galloped the best horses in the barn and rose to be the chief assistant to the Hall of Fame trainer. Gleaves, 29 and a native of Liverpool, England, is training on his own now and quickly making his mark. The Gleaves-trained Wise Times won three straight Grade I races this summer, including a score in the Travers Stakes that denied Stephens his first win in the Saratoga Race Course classic.