HEAD DOWN – Sir Ben Ainslie
For the second time Land Rover BAR won their home Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series event in Portsmouth, pushing Oracle into second spot with great sailing and a vocal crowd. Spithill and crew have yet to win a World Series event – a fact they will maintain means little in the big picture, but this will have been noted at Oracle HQ. With no disrespect to the talent in the other teams, there is a growing feeling the main event next year will be between old team- mates Ainslie and Spithill, and for BAR to be performing so well in its first Cup cycle, plus winning without first choice tactician Giles Scott, this must be focusing the minds of Oracle’s afterguard… Seahorse Magazine: Looking back at the setting up from scratch of Ben Ainslie Racing, what were the critical lessons you took from your time at Oracle? Ben Ainslie: Everyone involved with that Oracle campaign would admit we made mistakes. For many reasons we didn’t have the time on the water getting ready for the competition, and so the positives really were the ingenuity of the team to help work through that, so that when it came to the races the sailors could focus on the priorities. For me the key lessons learnt were in observing guys like Russell Coutts and Grant Simmer, how they dealt with the issues to help turn the team round in difficult times. I also took lessons from my time at Team NZ with Grant Dalton – a very different management style from Grant or Russell’s, but equally effective. SH: What can you say of a guy like your own sailing manager Jono Macbeth? BA: Fantastic sailor, great integrity and credibility and a key person to pinpoint what we wanted with this team – how we wanted to be different in our ethos and structure. The guys look up to him and he has done a fantastic job. SH: You came from a successful series of Olympic programmes right back to Atlanta in 1996. You had no skiff, foiling or A-Class background – yet have transitioned brilliantly to helming here. BA: To be perfectly honest it did concern me going into this campaign. I did a little bit of helming on the AC72s in San Fransisco, but not that much, and they are a very different beast from these smaller foiling boats. It was something we really worked hard at with our first test boat, getting time on the water right through the winter here in the UK, including in the snow, hail and rain… just like old times.
As in any sport the 10,000-hour rule applies – if you put in the hours you will feel more comfortable learning, developing and making those improvements as a helm. I know I can still improve as a helmsman, but we have proved to be competitive. And we have the right people and the right mindset to improve as a team. SH: Jimmy and the guys at Oracle have Philippe Presti as an observer and coach. Who are you using to bounce ideas off? BA: We have Rob Wilson who is fantastic. An Olympic Tornado sailor, involved with coaching the Extreme Sailing Series teams, he so understands the shorter racecourse. We spent a fair bit of time trying to identify the right person for this role. This is Rob’s first Cup campaign and he has done a great job for us. SH: Reasons for training in the Solent last winter? BA: Close to the base for logistics. But the cold is a big issue, particularly when you are using your fingers as helmsman to control
things like board rake. On the helm you get cold very quickly, whereas the other guys are working harder physically and generating their own heat. So we battled through that winter but it was worth it for the time on the water. We certainly weren’t being observed by other teams then – following in a chase boat in those conditions wasn’t fun. SH: These Cup Boats have a clear element of danger. Franck Cammas had a horrendous injury that took him out of the team, and you somersaulted this time last year. If you crack a rib or bust a couple of fingers meaning you can’t sail – how would the team reorganise? BA: Leigh McMillan is a great helmsman, one of the top guys on the Extreme circuit and doing a great job helming for us. SH: Less than a year out from the Cup, what are you happy with and what are the areas the team needs to focus on? BA: What are we happy with… I would say where the team has come from as a new organisation, we are all proud of that, certainly I am very proud of what we have achieved to date – the effort every- one has put in. What do we need to work on? Well, time is tight, it’s been tight catching up on the design front, bringing a new design team together with the tools all working and having confidence in them has been a big challenge, but I think we are there now. We are in a very aggressive design phase between now and the Cup, and if we can achieve those goals of designing, building and testing successfully, we will be in a good place. SH: You have a drawer full of CVs… The recent signing of Xabi Fernández, what does he bring? BA: All through the campaign, not just in the sailing team, we have tried to identify people on how they fit, not just with their talent but with their personality. Jono and myself have taken a long time to build up the sailing team, it took us a long time to identify a helmsman like Leigh to bring in, and with Xabi we were looking for someone with a bit more experience in big campaigns to join our
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Top: the World Series AC45S is relatively tame compared to the AC50s that begin launching in December but they can still bite. Above: there’s speed and then there’s scale... the gentleman on the left isn’t bird watching, he’s the man in charge of ‘black band’ compliance onboard Shamrock IV during the 1920 America’s Cup
SEAHORSE 11
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