two year hiatus was an unpleasant one, as the American bundled the highly fancied New Zealander out of the Omega Gold Cup yesterday in Hamilton Harbour.

Still more surprising was the apparent ease with which Baird was able to extinguish the Kiwi, who appeared a mere shadow of his former self, losing three straight races in the pair's best-of-five first round series.

A stunned crowd at Albouy's Point watched attentively as the number three seeded Baird dismissed Dickson's challenge, winning by margins of 30 and 40 seconds in the first two races while Dickson posted a DNF -- did not finish -- on his third outing.

However, Baird claimed it was no easy task against Dickson, conceding that his rival's time away from the sport played a significant part.

"It didn't feel like remarkable ease,'' said Baird of his victory over the former three time world champion. "Of course, we didn't expect 3-0, we just went out and tried to sail each race and do the best we could, but these guys really sailed the boat well today and everything Chris threw at us we were just reasonably expecting and stayed out of trouble ourselves.

"I think he's certainly one of the most talented sailors in the world, he's just been away from it for a while, so we feel fortunate that he's actually a little bit rusty here.'' An obviously disappointed Dickson admitted as much, as he and his crew sat somberly underneath the canopy at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

"Oh no question (we're rusty),'' said Dickson, a Gold Cup winner in 1987 and '89. "I'd say we have to update ourselves a little further on where the rules have changed. We also have to just spend a bit of time and effort remembering what the game's all about.'' With Dickson on the sidelines, Baird is shaping for another familiar adversary, the Netherlands' Roy Heiner, who successfully fended off the challenge of qualifier Neville Wittey of Great Britain 3-0.

The Florida native, though, said there was no special plan for Heiner and that he would simply do the same things that allowed him to be successful against Dickson.

"Roy's a great sailor too,'' said Baird. "There's no real preparation for it, we just go out and sail tomorrow the same way we tried to sail today.

"We've sailed against Roy a lot in the last couple of years so I'm comfortable that we know at least reasonably well what to expect from him and I think he's going to give us a really good match. It's going to be exciting.'' Meanwhile, all local eyes were on the match-up of world number two Rod Davis and Bermuda's Adam Barboza, competing in his first Omega Gold Cup.

But initial high hopes became feelings of despair with Davis showing his class against the overmatched Bermudian, similarly winning 3-0.

"During the qualifying round it was pretty interesting, (but) these guys are just a notch above all of us,'' said Barboza, beaten but certainly not embarrassed. "You really don't realise until you sail against them and they make it look very easy.

"They're aware of the rules and Rod's also a sail-maker, so he knows how to set the boat up to go as fast as possible. In the qualifying rounds we had pretty good boat speed with a lot of people...we didn't have it with him.'' Davis, meanwhile, has 1991 Gold Cup champion Eddie Warden-Owen as his next opponent, this after the Brit downed John Cutler 3-2 in the day's most exciting series.

Cutler won the first race easy by just over a minute then lost the next two by 23 and 33 seconds, but won the fourth when he forced Warden-Owen into a penalty to set up the deciding fifth race.

In that race, Cutler led at the first mark and held the lead half-way toward the second mark, but Warden-Owen was able to get an inside position for the second mark rounding and remained ahead off his competitor to pull out a 12 second win.

"All I was thinking to myself when (Cutler) got close to me on the second beat was `Give me a gun','' said Warden-Owen referring to the third leg, when Cutler nearly overtook him.

Remaining quarter-final matches today have Bermuda's Peter Bromby facing Peter Gilmour of Australia and number four seed Magnus Holmberg meeting an on-form Chris Law of Great Britain.