Record breaker

Ben Ainslie talks to us about his record fifth Finn Gold Cup win

One of Britain’s most famous sailors, Ben Ainslie, re-wrote the history books again yesterday as he took victory in his fifth Finn Gold Cup – the class’ effective world championship. While Ainslie’s five Gold Cup victories may not be chronologically consecutive, they are for him as he was unable to attend the event for the previous two seasons. The Brit has won every Gold Cup he has attended since 2002, the year he joined the class. This record, unparalleled in the history of the Finn class, reflects just how dominant this one man has been since he switched from the Laser.

Ainslie has, of course, been spending a significant amount of time away from the Olympic sailing scene in recent years, concentrating on the America’s Cup, first at Emirates Team New Zealand and more recently with Team Origin. It was his commitments with Team New Zealand that prevented him from attending the previous two Gold Cups. This ability to chop and change shows just how phenomenal a sailor Ainslie is. While he has won the last five Finn world championships he has entered, he has done so despite a two year break in the middle to sail a totally different type of boat in a totally different area of the sport and has returned to the class as if he never left.

Despite his historic victory – he is the first person ever to win four or more Finn Gold Cups – Ainslie was very modest when he spoke to TheDailySail, following the prize giving in Australia. “I am delighted, obviously. It has been a tough week and the conditions that we have had here have been very difficult. Everyone has struggled to find consistency. For the medal race we finally had a really nice sea breeze which suited me well and I was very happy to end it on a good note,” he commented.



Since Valencia and with the America’s Cup in hiatus, Ainslie has returned to the Finn with a vengeance. In December of last year in the build-up to the Gold Cup, Ainslie took part in – and won convincingly – the Sydney International Regatta. This event was a part of the British Finn Olympic selection series and his win there sealed his position as the class’ British representative at the Beijing Olympics this summer. “We have been down here for the last three months in the build up to that regatta which was part of my Olympic trials and, of course, there was the regatta out here in Melbourne before that we did. So we have spent a lot of time sailing down here in Australia. In many ways I think it was almost too much. It was so much sailing that I was getting close to burn-out.”

With the World Championships now over and done with and a solid three months of practicing in the Finn behind him, Ainslie now says he will take a few weeks off before beginning training again with the British squad back home. “I have to take the time away anyway as there is not really much going on at the moment and the boats have to be shipped back from Australia,” he explains.

Of course one major part of preparing for the Olympics themselves will be some hard fitness training and weight loss. “I have put a bit of weight on in preparation for the down under events, specifically the trials and then the World Championships here. Unfortunately we had a bit less wind than we expected. From now on, as with the rest of the fleet, we will all be trying to lose a little bit of weight for China,” Ainslie comments. However, he is not going to go super light for the event in Qingdao and thinks it would be a foolish plan to try. With conditions expected to be unstable there could well be a couple of light days and, Ainslie says, if you have set your development and fitness aims on extremely light winds, three windy days would put an end to you Olympics. This seems very wise from Ainslie and, no doubt, anyone sitting in his dominant position would exercise the same caution. However, it will be interesting to see if any other Finn sailors go super light in the hope of knocking Ainslie from the top of the tables just in case it is a fully light regatta.



With Ainslie occasionally stepping back into the Finn and dominating the class so totally on the international level, he clearly stands out as the major threat to other competitors. There have been comments from other Finn sailors about the Brit having a target on his back and this is something Ainslie admits he just has to come to terms with. “It is a tough thing to deal with and sometimes it does feel like the rest of the fleet is gunning to try and beat you, which is hard,” he confesses. “Really, though, it is just a part of Olympic sailing and that pressure never really goes away. If you are one of the top few boats you are always going to have that whether it be at the world championships or at the Olympic Games. It is something you have to get used to and fortunately I have been in that position before which helps you understand it and deal with it. You just go out and do your thing and try and sail as well as possible.”

Surely even for the impressive Ainslie jumping back into a class must be difficult, yet somehow he still seems to take victory so what is his secret? Is it like riding a bike? “Coming back into the class now is just different,” he explains. “I was a bit rusty but also I had a freshness which I would not have had, had I been Finn sailing the whole time. I think at my age and at this stage of my career, the important thing is to be fresh and to want to get out there and race. With the experience that I have the rest of it should come back fairly quickly.” Unquestionably Ainslie has proved this to be the case with his latest Gold Cup win, although he says it was not too easy as fitness is something that is becoming more difficult to stay on top of as he gets older.

No conversation with Ben Ainslie is complete without discussing the America’s Cup, particularly in these turbulent times for the ‘Auld Mug.’ Sure enough the current problems with the Cup are weighing heavily on the Brits mind. “Firstly it is massively frustrating - as I am sure anyone involved in sailing would say,” Ainslie exclaims. “The Cup has got to the stage now where it has really just become a bit of a yo-yo in the law courts. It is a ridiculous state of affairs for anyone interested in sailing. It is also very frustrating for anyone involved.”

Of course all of these Cup problems do have a useful side effect, allowing Ainslie to spend more time campaigning his Finn than might otherwise have been possible. “For me I suppose it gives me a window to focus on Finn sailing and the Olympics this summer, which is nice but for everyone else we need to get some certainty in the Cup, move forwards and get the event where it should be,” he exclaims.

While he will be able to sail his Finn more regularly than many might have imagined back in September when Ainslie was announced as Skipper of TeamOrigin, he still has commitments to the British team this year. “Sir Keith [Mills] has done a fantastic job of keeping the team together so far. As a sailing team our job is to be solid, go out there and do as much racing together as we can this year. We want to build the team spirit as much as possible so it is there when we start racing Cup boats in the near future. The Olympics are a big part of the next year but I will probably try and do a few match racing events in and around that to try and keep sharp.”

There is clearly no doubt Ainslie is one of the top sailors in the World. His most recent World Championship win is simply yet another notch on his tiller extention. Clearly he is the favorite to take the Gold Medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. He is the most successfull sailor ever to step into a Finn and looks set to reamain so. The only slight negative that can be bought to the table when discussing Ainslie is, this World Championship win was not as dominant as his others. That is a pretty great position to be in for anyone in any sport.