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An hour with Ben Ainslie

Posted 6 months, 27 days ago

An hour with Ben Ainslie
An Hour with Ben Ainslie It is hard to believe that Ben Ainslie is only 30, he became the world Laser Champion when he was just 20 years of age and his medal haul since has been unprecedented by any other British sailor in history. However Ben is still as hungry as ever for success. Ainslie is embarking on his third America’s Cup campaign, this time as skipper of Team Origin and hopes to be selected for his fourth Olympic Games in the Finn Class in Qingdao this summer. Louay Habib met up with Ben, in his home town of Lymington for a full and frank discussion. Ben Ainslie on THE AMERICA’S CUP During the Louis Vuitton Cup and the America’s Cup, Team New Zealand looked like they had a great atmosphere on board. Team spirit was something we worked really hard on as a unit, especially the last six months building up to the competition. We had people in like Graham Henry, The All Blacks coach , some of the All Blacks team came sailing with us on the boats, it was something we had worked out even before we came to Europe; that team work could really make the difference and we focused very hard on it. One thing that really impressed me about the guys who raced was; they never really talked about what happened on the water. The things that went wrong were never really discussed at the final stage, they didn’t bring any baggage back to the base, they had discussed it on the way in and had drawn a line underneath it. We could then look forward to the next race which I thought was quite impressive. Team New Zealand beat the odds to make the match with Alinghi but was it disappointing to lose, on paper, so comprehensively? Oh, Massively! Going back a step, I think that the team always backed itself to win the Louis Vuitton Cup but losing by such small margins in the Match was very disappointing. It was bad enough for me on the back-up boat. I can only imagine how it must have felt on the race boat. It is a funny situation in the America’s Cup, you go out every day and keep fighting and fighting and then one day it’s all over. The Kiwis, more than anybody, hate losing and when we were finally beaten, it was a very disappointing moment for everybody in the team. The 32nd America’s Cup was your second and you were in it from the first to the last, what did you learn from the experience? I learnt a massive amount personally; the team aspect, working with a team, running a team on the water, the communication side of things and a huge amount on the design side of how to make those boats go quickly and all the things that are important; the testing element, planning, logistics. Also, working with guys like Kevin Shoebridge and Grant Dalton, seeing how they operate; they are direct, purposeful, there is no messing. Even though I was not helming the race boat, I learnt a tremendous amount. When you told Grant Dalton, you were going to Team Origin, to skipper the British Team. How was that received? Pretty well, I always had a good relationship with Grant. Right from the very beginning, he was aware about what I wanted to do in the future. He was always very supportive of me, trying to become an AC Helmsman. From day one, he said that they were going to train me up and I was going to bugger off, sail with someone else and give New Zealand a hard time! But it was good for Dean and the Team that he had someone to push him, we were always very open about that and as soon as Sir Keith Mills announced Team Origin, it was an obvious direction to go in. So when I talked to Grant about it, he had already seen the writing on the wall and was fine about me going. The success of Team New Zealand at the Cup was to your disadvantage in many ways? Yes, with the team doing so well, there was no chance of changing a winning helmsman either in that Cup or the next and it was a little bit difficult missing out on the Finn World Championships in 2007. Staying with the Cup but moving on to Team Origin, Mike (Moose) Sanderson is the team director and from the “Grant Dalton” school of yachting, are the two similar and will Moose be sailing on the boat? Very similar, just Moose is a lot more refined than Dalts (laughs)! I think Moose understands match racing a little bit more but they are both great people to work for very inspirational, very direct. We are pretty keen to have Moose in the boat on the water, so he will be in there. In his role as Team Director, he needs to understand what is going on and if there are issues, he will be in a good position to resolve them. The last thing we want is a witch hunt, if something isn’t going well. Also, he is a real asset to have on the boat, just as a sailor, with a huge amount of experience and talent. Iain Percy has had great successes but not in the America’s Cup, why was he chosen as tactician for Team Origin? That is a fair comment looking back at the last Cup but looking forward to the next Cup, he would be right up there with the best tacticians. He is an extremely talented sailor; a very open and communicative person which is perfect for a tactician. He has been a helmsman himself, so he knows the issues that I am going to have and the rest of the team are going to have with boat handling issues. He is a great team player and he is one of my best friends; we have always had a very close relationship and we have always wanted to sail together, I think he will do a fantastic job and he is surrounded by good people. It is a young and relatively inexperienced after-guard but I think it is the right mix. The new AC90 rule looks like it will be producing some very fast boats? I think they will be pretty quick, maybe 12-13 knots upwind and they will be taking off downwind. Which is great; as it will make the racing a lot more exciting. The separation between the boats will be much bigger across the race course but the percentage gained and lost caused by wind shifts or more pressure will be bigger also. Especially downwind; an extra three knots of breeze could mean an extra two knots of boat speed. Overall Ben Ainslie:”I think that with all of the problems that have been going on between Alinghi and BMW Oracle, all of the effort put in by all of the challenging teams into trying to find a resolution is really credible. Through that I think that the possibilities of Alinghi working on something in the past, to gain a huge advantage is very unlikely. We have someone with the credibility of Tom Schnackenberg in there helping make the new rule, along side Juan Kouyoumdjian, Rolf Vrolijk and others. Alinghi can’t have had it all there own way with the new rule but it is going to be a design race for sure because of the changes. The speed differences between the teams will be bigger than they were the last time.” Crew number Ben Ainslie:”The crew number is up to 20 that is only a couple more people with much larger boats and with a large increase sail area. The boats are going to be a handful, it will be physically very demanding for the grinders. There is no crew weight limit, so those guys are going to have to be bigger and stronger but as with the version 5 boats, everybody is going to have to get stuck in. AC90 only allows you to sail one boat at a time which will mean less race crew will be required. The race team will probably increase in number but the overall numbers will be lower which will mean fewer wages to pay.” Research & Development Ben Ainslie:”The more horsepower you can get from the rule the better, so R&D is going to be big factor and the bigger teams will have an advantage there but depending on the amount of time we have got; the flair and the sharpness of the designers to come up with a quick boat is very relevant. A big change to R&D is no two boat testing which will mean a heavy reliance on the talents of the designers as much as the financial resources. In Team New Zealand, there was a strong link between the sailors and the design team and that is certainly the way we want to do things with Team Origin. Juan K has a great design team around him, including Andy Claughton who has a hell of a lot of experience in the America’s Cup, Bruce Thompson and Mickey Ickert and many more. We are more than confident with the design team that we have got. The sailing team will be helping the design team as much as possible and then try and get the boat around the track as quickly and safely as possible.” Is the boat going to be built in Lymington, your home town? There are some great boat builders in Lymington and some great boats have been built there, it will become obvious fairly shortly where the boat is going to be built. As Skipper of Team Origin and in your third America’s Cup, do you think that there will be more expectation for Ben Ainslie to deliver? It’s not really about me, it’s about the team and we have big ambitions to win the America’s Cup but that might not necessarily happen the first time. History shows that it is very rare for a new team to come in and win the Cup. Certainly, Keith Mills’s vision is to have two cracks at it; to do as well as we can the first time and have a go and to be really there for the second time. That is what the team is really about and as far as I am concerned, I am just out there with the rest of the team and my job is to steer the boat as quickly as possible in the right direction. Maintaining the fitness required means a lot of hours in the gym for Ben Ainslie:: What sort of music do you listen to in the gym? Snow Patrol are one of my favourite bands What do you most enjoy about gym training? Nothing at all! I much prefer to be out in a boat. How do you motivate yourself in the gym? Something like an Olympic campaign is motivation enough but if there are some pretty girls around that helps! How do relax after training? Movies are good; recently Blood Diamonds was a great watch. BEN AINSLIE ON THE FINN How are you preparing for the Finn Gold Cup in Melbourne in January 2008 and onwards to the Olympics in China? Melbourne can be windy in January, so I am putting weight on for that, I intend to increase my weight by 10kg come the Gold Cup. By the Olympics in Qingdao, I intend to lose those 10kg as it is generally light airs at the Olympic venue. The hardest thing is putting the weight on, to be honest, losing weight is not really that hard. My natural body weight is around 85Kg. If I qualify for the Olympics after Melbourne, it will probably only take me, six to eight weeks, to get down to the correct weight for the Games. Who do you see as your main rivals for the Finn Gold Cup? The Finn Class is so open at the moment but there are the stalwarts like; Jonas Hoegh-Christensen from Denmark, Emilios Papathansaiou from Greece. The Spaniard, Rafael Trujillo will be very strong in a breezy Melbourne, he will be tough to beat. Pieter-Jan Postma, a new Dutch guy who was second at the world’s this year and Ed Wright has been doing very well and so have a number of guys; it is a really open class. How well do you get on with Ed Wright? Ed and I have sailed together since we were kids, I have known Ed a long time and he is a very good sailor, but our paths split along time ago and it is funny that I am racing against him now, back in the Finn. It looks like selection could go as late as the Princess Sophia regatta or Hyeres which are both in April. It is very late for selection but that’s how it goes. It is difficult because Qingdao is such a unique location, there is nowhere in the world like it, you can’t say let’s go to Miami and do the trials there. You are not going to get conditions like Qingdao anywhere and we can’t race there, as only one person can race there this summer. What do you say to the people that say the Finn is a dinosaur and shouldn’t be an Olympic class? (Laughs) You should try sailing one for a start! I understand that argument but if you look at the boats that are out there for people over 85Kg to sail, there aren’t many. All you could do is sail a Star, which is a great boat but it is very expensive. There are a lot of guys whose natural body weight is over 85Kg and you would be taking them out of the game. Also some of the new classes look fantastic; like the Moth but it isn’t anywhere near as tactically demanding as racing a Finn. A Moth is a bit like a 49er; you don’t tack the boat that often. You tend to pick a side and go with those boats it’s about picking the right corner and sailing the boat quickly. Whereas, the Finn is about trying to get a good start in a tight fleet, picking the shifts upwind. Also downwind there is a huge amount of technique; if you watch a Finn sailor closely, the technique is pretty impressive. I think that sailing a Finn is a physical, technical and tactical challenge and it would be a shame if it went out; it would leave no class for the heavier guys. Assuming selection for Qingdao, will that be your last Olympics? I would love to sail in Weymouth in 2012, it would be a dream come true, after all the sailing I have done there over the years. If it was in the Finn, I would be 35 and that would probably be it as it is so physically demanding. Winning in Weymouth in my own back yard would be a very special occasion. Full Story »

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