Beginnings

Mark Chisnell looks at where the new superstar of British sailing came from

The rise and rise of Ellen MacArthur began more than six years ago, when at the age of 18 she set off alone to sail round Britain. The youngest person to do so, the achievement won her the 'BT/YJA Young Sailor of the Year. Brought up in Derbyshire, she had been inspired by sailing trips from as young as the age of eight, on holidays with her aunt.

But it takes more than inspiration, and the oft repeated story of how she saved up her school dinner money for three years to buy her first boat, an eight foot dinghy, has become part of the Ellen myth. Sailing at the top level in any area of the sport can be an expensive matter, and getting the cash to finance your ambitions is often the hardest part of the road to travel.

For Ellen that meant living in a portakabin for three years while she fought to raise sponsorship to compete in the Mini Transat. In the end she took a one-way ticket to France, bought and refitted a tiny 21 ft Classe Mini yacht while camping under it in a boatyard.
But somehow she got it ready, and raced the 4,000 miles across the Atlantic single-handed in 33 days, coming 17th in the 1997 Mini Transat race. It was a beginning, and enough to persuade Kingfisher to support her in the Route du Rhum transatlantic race. Despite the failure of her keel hydraulics, Ellen scored a quite spectacular success in winning her class - sailing in Pete Goss' Open 50 from the 1996 Vendee - and beating several Open 60s on the way. That won her the 1998 BT/YJA Yachtsman of the Year in the UK and 'Sailing's Young Hope' in France.

Kingfisher were impressed as well, and her big break was their decision to support her campaign for the Vendée Globe 2000 with all the finance she needed. It was the launch pad. By the time the race started, Ellen was departing with a major title to her name - the 2000 Europe1 New Man Star single-handed trans-Atlantic race.

In between was a carefully developed programme, that turned Ellen MacArthur from a novice to a world beater. From the moment the Vendee Globe got underway, she was never out of the leading pack, and doubts about her globe-girdling potential melted away as quickly as her rivals. Until in the final weeks she was challenging the race favourite, Michel Desjoyeaux, for the lead. The rest, as they always say at this point, is history.