Beefy Ben

madforsailing caught up with the new Finn European champion, Ben Ainslie

If anyone was ever in any doubt of the talent of Ben Ainslie, then it was his remarkable win at the weekend in the Finn Europeans, considering that it has been just five months since Ainslie first set foot aboard the hotly contested Olympic singlehander.

Since leaving the OneWorld America's Cup campaign and making the decision to go for the Finn, Ainslie has applied himself to the task of getting race ready with his normal vigour. Aside from purchasing boats and gaining time in them there has been the substantial issue of physically changing shape, from being a wirey Laser sailor to being a hulk of a Finn sailor.

When he was campaigning the Laser Ainslie weighed in at 79-80kg. To be at fighting weight in a Finn you need to be around 20% more than this. "It's a bigger range than it is in a boat like a Laser," says Ainslie of the weight he is heading for. "95kg is probably the lowest, up to Luca Devoti who is 115kg which is probably too heavy. But 95-105kg is ideal I'd say. I've got a bit of way to go. I've got some time this winter to really work hard on it. It's very hard when you're doing events - it's impossible to get in the gym and do the weight training when you're away racing. But you have to accept that and wait until you've got an off period then really hammer the gym to get the weight on.

"In the Laser, I spent all my time in the gym trying to lose weight, and doing fat burning sessions, now I'm eating tons and doing the weight training. It's more rewarding in a way because you see yourself getting bigger and lifting heavier weights. Maybe I'd better be careful not to get carried away!" So eating a lot of pies is only part of the equation.

Ainslie's bulking-up regime suffered a minor set-back prior to the Europeans. "My weight was about 93-94 kilos but then I had a bad bout of food poisoning for a week before the Europeans, so I've lost a bit of weight through that. I probably won't be able to do anything before the Worlds, but after that I'm building my weight back up and getting stronger which should hopefully improve my upwind performance when it's windy."

During the Europeans Ainslie started off in the frame, lying sixth overall after day one. The next day he won his first race and had moved up to second place overall behind the Sydney silver medallist, Italian Luca Devoti. The Wednesday was a bad day for Ainslie collecting a yellow flag for pumping and was later disqualified. "I got disqualified half way through the series in a race because my centre plate was 1mm too long although it had passed measurement before. I hadn't changed it so it was a bit of shock as to how it had suddenly become illegal."

During a random check the measurer used a jig to measure the board. "I got pulled up and they checked it with their measurement jig and it didn't measure. If you checked it with a tape measure it measured within the tolerance, but the measurer would only have it that his jig was the way to measure it. It was pretty disappointing, but it is a good lesson learned," said Ainslie. Top Polish Finn sailor Mateusz Kusznierewicz also got disqualified and quit the regatta early in disgust.

On the Thursday Ainslie put in a consistent fourth and fifth keeping him in second overall and repeated this performance the following day with a fifth and a first, taking him ahead of Luca Devoti into the top spot. To round off any doubts Ainslie also got a bullet in Saturday's final race to take the championship with a clear 10 point margin over Devoti. However the last race was not without incident.

At the start of Saturday's race Devoti was trying to give Ainslie a dose of his own medicine. "Because I was disqualified in measurement, he had a much better discard than I did, so like the last race in the Olympics, he was trying to do a similar thing to me, although I was a bit frustrated because he wasn't actually doing it within the rules. He was trying to come in to leeward of me before the start, but what we was actually doing was not giving me any time to keep clear. So each time we had a collision, he'd start shouting 'protest' but you can't do that under the rules. You have to give someone the opportunity to keep clear."

Fortunately for Ainslie the collisions all occurred prior to recalled starts, and at the start of the actual race he was further up the line and disentangled himself from Devoti. However it did not end there. "He [Devoti] protested me under rule 69 for bad sportsmanship. In the end the jury had to give me warning because they had to do something if someone lodges a protest. But in my view it was totally blown out of proportion from what normally goes on on the race course. I'm not quite sure where Luca was coming from."

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