The Ian Walker interview - Part 1

GBR Challenge's sailing manager tells Andy Rice about his new life in New Zealand

Ian Walker is getting used to life in Auckland. With the recent announcement of Paul Standbridge as part of the onshore management, GBR Challenge’s sailing manager might get a chance to build up his on-the-water skills.
"I’ve been busy in all sorts of aspects - the marketing, the recruitment of the personnel and so on. Now, with people like Leslie Ryan and Paul Standbridge coming on board, I’m freed up to focus more on the sailing," he tells madforsailing. "I need to focus on my role on the boat, and have tended to do more helming after Andy Beadsworth broke his wrist."

Currently, with just one ACC boat in Auckland, GBR 44, Walker is keen to get everyone doing the same jobs in the same way. Until now, that hasn’t been possible with different deck layouts on the three ACC boats at the teams’ disposal, but the goal now is to have the boats and the crew working as similarly as possible. That goes for the helmsmen too. Walker believes that Andys Beadsworth and Green, plus himself, all have different approaches to the helming job. "We need to take the best of which of us do and instil it in all of us."

Walker is clearly buzzing about being out in New Zealand. "I can’t stress enough just how much of a team we’re becoming," he says. With no logistical complications of people commuting across the Solent each morning, or any other of the things that inevitably distract people when training at home, there is a real chance to make big leaps and bounds he believes. "We're focused on what we've got to do as a group. There are no distractions here. When we go sailing it's just us, no journalists out sailing on the boats or things like that to think about. It's just us - and them, the other syndicates."

While GBR Challenge is trying to stay focused, you are only too aware of the presence of the other syndicates, says Walker. "It makes you want to do it better, seeing them around. As I speak, I'm looking out at 'Syndicate Row', and can see all the compounds.

"All the big syndicates have congregated at one end. Team New Zealand is there and right next door there is the big Swiss building on a double-site plot, just to piss the Kiwis off, I would imagine." With their high-wire fences, and my building’s-bigger-than-yours syndrome, Walker says there is a feeling of keeping up with the Jones's, but he’s quite happy living down the far end with the other underdogs. "We're down the other end with illbruck and the Swedish, and we're pretty happy just getting on with our own thing down here."

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