GREAT BRITAIN A true champion – Stuart Jardine
It was the great Paul Elvstrøm who famously said that ‘you haven’t won the race if in winning the race you have lost the respect of your competitors’. As sailing mourns the loss of one of the true greats in Lt Colonel Stuart Jardine OBE, it is an absolute that this serial winner never, in a lifetime of racing, lost the respect of his fellow competitors.
Indeed, such was this rare talent that Stuart was the de facto bellwether of the UK south coast racing scene, as well as interna- tionally, for a long and storied sailing career of the highest calibre. This writer’s privilege, of formative years growing up through the then nascent youth programme of the Royal Lymington YC, was to experience Stuart first-hand, a guiding force always willing to dissect tactics post-race or offer logical advice on tuning and boat set-up. Stepping up into J/24s from dinghies in young adulthood, we knew we were having a good day if we were ahead of Stuart and his twin brother Adrian, so rare was the experience and so good were they at frontrunning when ahead. Impossible to pass, Stuart was a master racer, with an innate skill and sense honed by practice and deepset from his days representing Great Britain in the Star class at both the 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games. The journey to that keelboat pinnacle was via multiple champion - ships and a grounding in the Firefly class where the ‘Jardine twins’ won the Nationals four times from five between 1950 and 1954, interspersed with three National 12 Burton Cups between 1952 and 1956.
Arguably one of the great loves of Stuart’s life, and where his legend was cemented, was the XOD fleet on the south coast, a fiendishly difficult boat to win in and one that suited his analytical approach and big fleet skills. Consistency was the byword and a dedication to a sailing process that he honed, refined and imparted to his crew… often simply through whistling.
I remember Stuart, and it’s something that really stuck in the memory bank, telling me that a wooden XOD mast was at its fastest when it was near the end of its life and ready to break. It was classic Stuart, teasing your intelligence and to this day I still can’t fathom it logically. But he was no doubt right and in 1956 he secured his first XOD Captain’s Cup, starting a win record in the class that is unlikely ever to be beaten – his eighth and last victory coming 40 years later in 1996.
What filled that 40-year gap was a tour of most of the world’s most competitive classes, starting with the Flying Dutchman where he travelled to the 1960 Rome Olympic Games in Naples as team reserve after winning four UK national titles between 1961 and 1965. His army career was now in its ascendancy, but it was in 1965 where his Star sailing started to become a focal point. Two years later, sailing with James Rasmus, he secured his slot for Acapulco, Mexico, finishing 10th in the Olympic regatta before switching crew to John Wastall for the 1972 Olympic regatta in Kiel, where they finished seventh.
With a young family and very supportive wife in Mary-Ann, Stuart changed keelboat gear, moving into the Quarter, Half and Three- Quarter Ton classes, while keeping sharp racing his Laser. He captained both the Army and the Royal Engineers’ dinghy teams for many years, winning the Inter-Services Gold Cup no fewer than 13 times. In 1988 he took on an Army-owned J/24, Chieftain, which started a long association with the class, primarily as a com- petitor and later on with the organisational and technical teams. In his first year in the J/24 he finished second in the UK Champion - ship before buying his own boat, Stouche, to ramp things up the following season. In the same year Stuart was presented with a Silk Cut Nautical Award, as well as being awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List.
His long association with the J/24 class was rewarded over the following years with six national and one European championship title – winning with his brother in their own inimitable style of both sitting, legs in, in the cockpit, something that was a head-scratcher for many. But talent, tactics and an ability to see windshifts well ahead of the competition, plus excellent big fleet management, made the Jardines a formidable and often unbeatable pairing. As the clock marched on, Stuart steadily dedicated more and
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