Ben Ainslie: The greatest Olympic sailor of all time

British legend overtakes Paul Elvstrom after a drama-laden Finn medal race (inc. updated league table of medallists)

Ben Ainslie became the greatest Olympic sailor of all time today, winning the Finn medal race at London 2012 on Weymouth’s Nothe course in front of 4,600 ticketed spectators and at least as many again, packed around the shoreline either side of the ‘official’ ticketed area.

The Finn medal race was a complicated edge-of-seat affair with the Nothe in unpredictable form, the wind the lightest we have seen all week and blowing across Portland Harbour.

In addition to some pre-start match racing between Ainslie and his Danish arch-rival, Jonas Høgh-Christensen, a crucial part of the medal race was the part played by Dutch sailor Pieter-Jan Postma, who started the day in third place, 14 points astern of second placed Ainslie, in turn two points behind the Dane.

On the last run, as Ainslie and Høgh-Christensen were languishing at the back of the 10 boat fleet, in ninth and tenth places respectively, Postma had to finish second or better to secure gold (which would have been an interesting scenario, leaving all three boats on 46 points...)

Coming into the very last mark of the course before the reach in to the finish, the Dutchman was third, immediately behind, and attempting desperately to get around, the Finn of Kiwi Dan Slater, as both boats were approaching the mark on port. In trying to get around, a wave caught Postma’s boat and his boom touched the Kiwi’s and he was forced to carry out a penalty turn. With this Postma’s lost the bronze medal that was in his grasp at the time, transferring it to winner of the medal race, France’s Jonathan Lobert.

As Dan Slater recounted: “It was one of those things. PJ is a great friend and I didn’t know the exact points and we were coming down the run and all I wanted to do was to protect the inside. He had a go and before we did it, I said to him ‘don’t do it, I’m going to protect the inside, just don’t do it, you’ve got a medal’. But he did. And then he mucked it up, he dropped his main sheet, the boom hit the back of my boat and the jury and everyone was there to see it, and probably 100 chopper shots, and he had to do his penalty.

“I am sorry for him, but that is yacht racing and it was a really big risk he took for not a lot of gain. He had a bronze medal sewn up at that point. I didn’t want to get involved because they are all good friends, but unfortunately I have still got to sail my race and I wasn’t going to wave him through.”

Ainslie, who in the fickle conditions today on the Nothe, was unable to make headway up the fleet, could be nothing about this but watch. “Coming down to the final mark, PJ, in a little bit of desperation, tried to get around the New Zealand sailor and he wasn’t in a very good tactical position to do that and once that failed then I knew I was in good shape," said a relieved Ainslie.

“It was close, but that was the nature of the conditions. All I could do was try to stay ahead of Jonas and it was up to PJ if he could get through to gold, because the conditions were too variable. It was impossible to keep a tab on two guys at once.

“I can’t really believe it to be honest. This event has been really hard and then you look back over the years at what's happened...it is unbelievable. I am just relieved to have got through today. I have never sailed in such a nerve racking race in my life on that course in those winds that there were today. To be honest my heart was in my mouth the whole way around that race track. It was a very difficult race and in that wind direction it was very hard to predict what was going to work. But in terms of the opportunity to race in front of a home crowd like that for an Olympic Gold medal, that will never get any better, so I am very grateful for that opportunity and to pull it off.”

Despite the possible threat from Postma in third, at the start of the race, Ainslie had been hounding Høgh-Christensen, which has become something of a trademark for the Brit. As he explained: “I just had a feeling that I wanted to try and put some pressure on Jonas before the start. In the end it didn’t really work out like that. But when you look at the races before you start and the outcomes and you think, ‘if I do nothing and he gets the right side...’, you spend the rest of your life thinking ‘I should have tried something’. That was my philosophy: to try and put a little bit of pressure on him. I wasn’t necessarily trying to get both of us to the back of the fleet as it turned out, I was just hoping to get ahead.

“So at the start I tried to get into Jonas, but he did a good job of defending, sailing round and round the committee boat, so that was a bit boring! But a good tactic. And I got out to the right hand side and it worked...just. It is a fine line in any sport and sailing in those conditions it could have gone either way but it went my way and it worked.”

Høgh-Christensen gave his take on the medal race: “Tough race. I did what I wanted to do. I knew Ben was going to come for me in the start. He did. I got him around the committee boat and got myself into a pretty good spot. I got to bail when I wanted to bail and got into a good position on the start line and got a great start, squeezed them off and pushed to the left. The left has been paying out here pretty much all week and during all the training we have done here for the last two months. So I wanted to send him right and keep going to the left. Unfortunately the right came in but that’s sailing. It wasn’t great.

“Once I was behind it was very hard to catch back up. I took some chances trying to get by him and I almost succeeded on the last beat but it wasn’t to be and both of us got quite lucky. PJ had the gold, 50m before the bottom mark. Looking back, Ben might have gone too far in the match racing because we didn’t get to race our race but that is the way it is and luckily for Ben, PJ got a flag and he [Ben] ended up winning the gold.”

And so gold went to Ainslie and silver to Høgh-Christensen. Despite claiming the big prize in this unorthodox way, in fact everything panned out the right way, the deserved getting the right coloured medals, even though from Høgh-Christensen’s performance for the first three days of the series, Danish fans would question this.

At the end of day three, after six races, Høgh-Christensen was holding a 10 point lead over Ainslie and was clearly proving the dominant force. Ainslie attributed this to the Dane sailing better than he was, but many felt that Høgh-Christensen was also getting a speed edge out of his new mast/sail combination. Typically the Dane was faster upwind, Ainslie downwind.

As Ainslie put it: “I was seriously worried after six races because Jonas was sailing so well. He was fast, he was getting the shifts right, good starts, and downwind too, so I knew something had to change and get my act together and start getting some points back.”

Fortunately after Wednesday's layday the Ainslie of old returned, pulling back to within two points of the Dane, with a 1-3-6-1 scoreline in the last four full fleet races as the Dane lost his stride marginally.

Ainslie continues: “It was hard because the expectations going in where so high and no matter I said, that it wasn’t necessarily the case, people kept pushing it and when I started off on the back foot people were upset that I wasn’t winning and that was hard. But that was the nature of the position I was in and it took everything to get back on equal terms going into that medal race.”

Coming ashore Ainslie paid tribute to his coach David ‘Sid’ Howlett. “He has been through a lot over the last 18 months and he has always the one who has been behind me when things have been tough and certainly I owe a huge amount to him. He has been involved with at least four gold medals as a coach and he has never had any real recognition and he deserves it.” Here here.

This coming week Ainslie will remain in the Weymouth with the rest of Skandia Team GBR to see what happens in the remaining classes that are still racing. “The rest of the team are still fighting their hearts out to do the best job they can. It has been a great honour to be part of this team. Of the Olympic teams over the years, this one in particular I think has been our best. So we are not going to disappear off. We are going stick around and support those guys and hopefully they can bring home a few more medals.”

After that Ainslie heads for San Francisco where he takes up the helm for the first time of the BAR AC45 in the America’s Cup World Series before moving on to be one of Oracle Racing’s tune-up helmsmen.

And his future Olympic prospects? “You never say never, but it would be impossible for me to experience anything better than this. So it would need to be a very good reason to come back.” He discounts returning in the Finn. A new generation of Finn sailing giants is coming through like bronze medallist Jonathan Lobert or Team GBR’s own Giles Scott as Finn sailing gets all the more physical to be competitive. And Ainslie is not getting any younger.

“It has been really hard the last 18 months,” he admitted of the shape he’s in. “I had issues over the winter with my back and had some surgery on that. Slowly things start falling apart physically as you get older and it is really tough. Especially downwind you are pushing yourself to the limit and the body doesn’t always like it, but thankfully I got through this week and we have some fantastic physio support within our team and they really did a great job to keep me patched up to get through the week.”

Ainslie has previously said that if he were to do another campaign it would be in the Star, but at present this is off the Olympic roster for Rio 2016. If the Star was instated as an additional medal, then the Team GBR squad for Rio could be most competitive with possibly Iain Percy/Andrew Simpson and also possibly Paul Goodison, who has mentioned in the past that he would like to graduate up to the Olympic keelboat.

Kiwi Dan Slater paid the best tribute to Ben Ainslie, who he has known since they raced against each other at the Youth Worlds 20 years ago: “What an amazing effort – four gold medals and a silver, you have to say he is the greatest sailor in the world. This is the toughest sailing you can do and he has just turned it on every time. He is an amazing athlete and it has taken him until now to beat Paul Elvström’s record. And Robert Scheidt could have done it today who is also another fantastic athlete. What Ben has done today has gone down in the history books as the best all time in sailing.

Why is he so good? “He is just cool. He just keeps a cool head under pressure. You didn’t see him blow up today. He didn’t get a great start. He was suck in the middle of the class, he just bided his time, made sure he stayed with Jonas and didn’t let him get out of his sights. It is the minimal risk for maximum gain and he does it every time. He is just really good at it.”

With his silver and gold medals in the Laser and his three Finn golds, Ben Ainslie has now overtaken Paul Elvström in the league table of Olympic sailing medallists (see below for the current list as of 5 August 2012) while after his silver today Iain Percy has drawn level with Rodney Pattisson as the second greatest British Olympic sailor of all time, alongside the likes of Star veteran Mark Reynolds and Poul Hog Jensen.

More photos from Carlo Borlenghi/www.borlenghi.com/FIV