Other classes other titles – Part II


When you look back at Paul Elvstrøm’s extra - ordinary life those four Olympic gold medals were really just the icing on the cake. Tim Jeffery


Other sailors dubbed Paul the Great Dane, or the Mozart of Sailing, explained by his virtuosity in making sailing boats go fast. In addition to the four golds, he is the only man to have won world championships in four Olympic classes (Finn, FD, Soling, Star) in a tally of 13 titles earned in seven different classes, the others being 505, Snipe and Half Ton.


Elvstrøm defied convention in every class he sailed, constantly exploring smarter, better and faster ways to sail. In the FD he wondered if tacking would be faster if he trapezed on the fly around the bow. ‘Not one of my better ideas,’ he conceded. He did make a success of role reversal on the 505 by helming from the trapeze while his crew hiked normally. ‘If the crew was lighter than the helmsman, I think it was an excellent idea. We sailed very fast with my extra weight on the trapeze.’ The fascination


with trapezing was


enduring. When World Sailing, as the IYRU, held trials for a high-performance singlehander, Elvstrøm entered Trapez. It was a clever and complex boat, with


46 SEAHORSE


features such as a double-diamond stayed rig that was fully adjustable while racing. The International Canoe ‘won’ the 1965 Lymington trial, with Trapez second ahead of the simpler David Thomas-designed Unit. A second trial was held in La Baule. Turning up in France with his self-designed Contender (it was part financed by a new sailcloth) was Bob Miller/Ben Lexcen. This time the Contender won, though the Finn’s position in the Olympic roster proved to be insurmountable.


It was not the end of the story. Elvstrøm


tweaked the design, making it into a two- person boat that is still raced today. Trapezing was even tried on an IOR One Tonner. ‘I couldn’t resist experiment- ing,’ Paul recalled of a regatta in Sweden. With the crew out on wires, lake-racer style, the righting moment was pheno - menal. So too was the speed. ‘Immediately the race finished the committee was on the phone to London (to the Offshore Racing Council) to get them to change the rules…’ When the Half Ton Cup headed to Marstrand in 1972, Elvstrøm was there too with his own design Bes. This was still the era of true cruiser- racers with the likes of Scampis and Ballards winning regularly. One-off boats largely came from Spark- man & Stephens


but were resolutely


yacht-like with conservative hull forms and deckhouses. Bes was a big, beamy flush decker, in the same line of thinking that Jean-Marie Finot was pursuing with his 40ft Admiral’s Cupper Revolution.


She was stripped out, had a spindly fractional rig and a bridge deck to allow chat between the navigator below and helmsman. She also featured solid hiking wings until their use was also banned… Elvstrøm and Bes won the Half Ton Cup that year even without her crew being allowed to hang off their wings. The IOR rule was turned on its head throughout the rest of the 1970s by the new young design turks, but Elvstrøm returned to the class in 1981 in Poole. This time he sailed the Jean Berret-designed, Bénéteau-built King One.


It wasn’t a flawless performance. Mistakes were made, which rankled with Paul’s elevated expectations. ‘But it was my most satisfying win,’ he remembered. ‘Back in 1948 I knew that if I didn’t win I had my whole life ahead of me. But in 1981 I had been away from world champi- onship sailing for a long time. I was happy that I could still win. When you like to sail perfectly it’s not nice to grow old.’ Paul had earlier established a fertile


design partnership with Jan Kjaerulff. It would be hard to conceive two more con- trasting boats than the Coronet Elvstrøm 38 motor-sailer and the Elvstrøm 717 sportsboat as examples of the range of boats they generated. The former was a centre cockpit cruising boat that max- imised internal accommodation. So far so typical… Less so was a huge torpedo-like bulb designed to manage the bow wave and boost performance that lay just below


JONATHAN EASTLAND/AJAX


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