Life on the Olympic 49er Trail

The Daily Sail meets Richardson and Greenhalgh

In one of the corners of the Sailboat show was an interesting stand, that of 49er sailors Alister Richardson (above left) and Pete Greenhalgh (above right), there for no other reason than to provide some exposure for their group of sponsors and dish out some cans of Red Bull.

The Daily Sail dragged the pair away for lunch and talked to them about life on the 49er Olympic trail, so far four and half years old.

The British 49er fleet consists of two other strong teams. Chris Draper is sailing with Ian Barker’s Olympic Silver medallist crew Simon Hiscocks, this pair have arguably put together the strongest challenge so far, and veteran campaigner Paul Brotherton is sailing with Mark Asquith.

A more recent addition to this top flight are Alister and Pete’s tuning partners, the talented Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes. Alister explained that due to a little bit of friction between the main contenders, with the usual reluctance to share tuning numbers and information, they decided to invite Stevie under their wing.

“He just basically gets to learn about living the Olympic life and is getting a free ride. He pays for half the fuel and that’s it and he’s doing our campaign,” said Alister who went on to explain that: “We want them to be cannon fodder to get in the way of Chris and Paul.”

That said, the recent Cadiz test event result proved a little embarrassing with Morrison and Rhodes finishing a couple of places ahead of them in tenth, with Draper finishing in second and Brotherton in fifth.

However the road has another 13 months left in it. Unless one team completely dominates the circuit this year and puts in a top result at the Worlds the selection procedure will end at Weymouth in 2004. The winner of this event will be the team selected to go to the Olympics.

If the pair have one strong asset it’s their unwavering enthusiasm for what they are trying to achieve combined with an ability to ‘take the knocks’. Peter describes one particular day; “We had a fantastically shit day in Athens last year, everything went wrong, sailing back in I slipped over and smacked my shin, and then about five minutes later we sailed into a brick wall underwater and just wrecked the foils, ripped the rudder off the back of the boat.” Alister adds, “Ah, well you got to laugh about it all really sometimes.”

These tales of swinging the lantern gloss over the real determination underneath. “It’s got more and more professional to be honest,” says Pete, “our sailing campaign now is a proper job, planning, logistical, technical programme, the right coaches at the right time. Its about the more we do the more we learn, we have had all those expensive lessons.”

Alister’s, who’s 23, has a traditional dinghy sailing background in classes such as the 405, 420, Laser 5000 and then into the 49er. His most notable successes have been in youth match racing, finishing fourth at the World’s. He has been nominated twice for Young Sailor of the Year, losing out to Ellen MacArthur, who at that time had sailed around the UK in her Corribee. Alister describes how the pair came close to their most significant victory in the 49er:

“At the worlds in 2002 we’re in second place going into the last day, but had a poor final day and slipped to seventh. On reflection we found out that we actually took the slowest boat to Hawaii.”

They have three boats in all. One is currently being built, the other is in the factory being tickled up and that leaves the one on display, which is to become the spare boat. Of the two new boats, one will live in Europe and the other will stay in the UK.

The cash for all of this comes out of their sailing budget and they have successfully put together a group of sponsors. They are currently on Level B Lottery funding and this is combined with money from their main sponsor Red Bull. To this is added ‘benefits in kind sponsors’ such as Monaco of Kensington (a VW garage), Neilson Holidays, LDC Racing Sailboats, Holt and Helly Hansen. All of these sponsorships have come through contacts the two have made, ensuring that any proposal gets on the right desk rather than in the secretary’s bin.

Red Bull have been sponsoring the pair for eighteen months and importantly they have survived the first year review, which was put in jeopardy following a “silly drinking incident”, says Peter. He continues; “It’s an extreme sport basically and that’s what they like.”

When it comes to sponsor sailing, most have visions of taking out the MD and his chums in a rib to watch the racing. However when you have Red Bull as your sponsor, things take a slightly different slant. Alister and Pete were keen to do something additional this year and went to Red Bull and discussed various options. These included taking an 18 foot skiff around the UK (maybe the Ellen thing was getting to them) and sailing the 49er across the channel, however it was Red Bull who came up with the idea of getting the 49er airborne.

As a stunt, they will be putting hydrofoils onto the 49er and booking a photographer.

Alister is very enthusiastic about it, “I think it will work, we have got Phil Morrison onto it, he claims we will be able to get the boat out of the water, it’s a question of whether it will actually stay up or just cartwheel.”

Phil Morrison is Stevie’s father and plays an important part in the team with his technical expertise. Added to him is Richard Woof, who although not involved in any 49er building, looks after the boats and makes sure they are up to scratch.

When it comes to sailing coaches the pair just take certain people at certain times, rather than relying on any one relationship. Part of the reasoning of this is that the 49er hasn’t been around too long, so that aren’t many people who really know much more than the current group of sailors. “What we can use coaches for at events is to identify subtle differences that the others (competitors) may be doing” says Peter.

For this year they are focusing on the equipment that they are using, which basically boils down to buying lots and working out which pieces have a performance edge. Alister suggests that these differences are small but noticeable, “Anyone sailing with this stuff at a Nationals or something wouldn’t notice and it would be perfect, but finishing in the top 15 in the World’s, well that’s the difference. The problem is with the 49er it’s so ruthless that if you can’t get across the fleet at the right moment you can be blown out the backdoor, then you're in a world of dirty air and you can’t get back into the racing”.

When it comes to live on the road, the pair just shrug it off as part of the experience. Like all modern sailing executives the laptop is pretty handy, “well you can use the internet to help with booking accommodation and things” says Alister, “or you can just turn up and blag it. People try to make out that travelling around and living out of bags is quite difficult, it’s not really, we’re just quite used to it now.” Pete goes on to explain: “The seven Olympic events are all in the same place, so we know what the facilities are like, where the accommodation is and where the supermarket is. On top of that there are about another seven events that we might have to wing it a little bit.”

Where does all this lead them, after the Olympics are ‘done’? They admit that depending on the outcome of the trials they would umm and err quite a bit about doing another full campaign.

Both realise there is an opportunity to make sailing their long term profession and this will ultimately lead into professional yacht sailing. It is the big cats that have really got the two smitten and both of them took the opportunity to sail on PlayStation in Portugal before she left for her successful record attempt across the Atlantic.

For Alister it’s definantly mulithulls, “I would really like to get into the 60 foot tris, they are just awesome. I don’t like the idea of an America’s Cup, slogging it around in a giant winch”

For these two enthusiastic and seasoned campaigners the Olympics remain their immediate goal and it will be up to them to put it all into practise, when it really matters, and see if it will be good enough. Whatever the outcome, we think these two sailors will be around for a long time.

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