Behind the scenes


Three-time world champion in 470s Hamish Willcox moved on into a successful career as an America’s Cup and Olympic coach and met man… while with wife Ulrika producing two children each Olympians and in two entirely different disciplines. As Andy Rice explains, for the man the Oracle sailors called their ‘Weather Padrone’ the big successes continue to pile up


Who bursts on to the scene and wins an Olympic class world championship at their first attempt? Especially at the age of 21. Hamish Willcox, with fellow young


Kiwi David Barnes, achieved just that when they embarked on their 470 campaign and competed at the 1981 World Championships in Quiberon in Brittany. So how did two young New Zealanders fly from the other side of the


46 SEAHORSE


world to beat so many legends in their first senior international championship? One part of the answer is the fact that


New Zealand was coming on strong in the 470 class at the time, although no Kiwi had yet won a world championship in that fleet, or any other Olympic class for that matter. Barnes and Willcox were poor but lean and hungry for success. Willcox would paint houses by day and go sailing in the afternoons or evenings with Barnes, and they worked on every facet of their campaign that they possibly could with their limited resources. So strapped for cash were the young


team that at first Barnes couldn’t even afford a ratchet block for the mainsheet. Instead he fitted a padeye with no moving parts. Competitors assumed that their approach of simplicity in the 470 was born out of a KISS philosophy, but mostly it was born out of necessity. ‘We couldn’t afford to buy one of the overseas hulls like a Van- guard from the USA, which was the popu- lar choice of the time,’ says Willcox. ‘So we bought a Marten and fitted it out ourselves, and made a bit of a mess of it to be honest!’


However, there were aspects of cam-


paigning a 470 that only cost time, and Barnes and Willcox invested huge amounts of time on the water perfecting their boathandling – both in terms of the standard manoeuvres around the race- course and the more subtle kinetics of how to work the boat through waves. In the 1980s the only Olympic sailors


on state or federation funding were from the Eastern Bloc nations like the USSR and East Germany. Almost all western nations along with the Aussies and Kiwis were still on self-funded programmes. Today the level of funding and coaching support is sky high compared with when Willcox was embarking on his Olympic dreams. However, he believes there is a lot to be said for being strapped for cash because it forces you to focus on the basics. ‘Forty years ago it cost a fortune to travel up to Europe so we wanted to be absolutely ready and as well prepared as we could when we made the trip,’ he says. ‘Too many sailors these days start on


the international campaign trail, doing regatta after regatta and trying to learn the


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