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Living legend...The foundation of Britain's Olympic success...

Posted 9 months, 14 days ago

Living legend...The foundation of Britain's Olympic success...
When I first met Jim Saltonstall at Rutland Water back in 1988, I had a Marlboro Red clamped to my mouth and a pint of lager on the go. He sort of looked at me with a very uneasy smile and we both knew where we stood. He didn't like me and I certainly didn't go for the ex-Royal Navy precise look and his no-stone unturned approach - I was far more seat of the pants than that and still am! Funnily enough he went on to be right about my future Olympic aspirations and concentrated on coaching the "golden generation" including Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy, Stuart Childerley, Shirley Robertson etc etc etc....How right he was to ignore my precocious brilliance (!) and then I went and thoroughly annoyed him by port tacking the fleet at a 420 nationals, tacking right on his chase boat with another fag in mouth! In short, we were never going to be friends but I have to say that I deeply admire the man and his influence that he's had on so, so many great British sailors. You can squarely say that he was the foundation of Britain's Olympic success and the current coaches, good as they are, are still deferring to Jim's brilliance. What i'm after is some anecdotes from my readers about Jim. Tell me the funniest story that you have about him or if you can remember any of his unique catch phrases like "Uuuurkay team, it's as flat as a witches tit out there" etc etc...I'd love to hear them and I promise I'll publish them: send them in to: gossip@rule69blog.com Jim Saltonstall MBE....It should be Sir Jim surely? Full Story »

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