Deano talks to madforsailing

Dean Barker on match racing and the America's Cup defence

At the end of the first round robin in the Steinlager/Line 7 Cup, Bob Fisher talked to the world match racing champion, Dean Barker, and asked if he was happy with a scoreline of seven wins and four defeats. It's been interesting because I'm a bit rusty at the moment. At times I'm sailing well and at others not quite so well. It's not as good as we had hoped, but, given the conditions, at least we are on the right side of the wins and losses. It's incredibly close at the top; there are eight sailors who can still make it to the semi-finals.The second round robin is going to be incredibly tight.

Making the top four is what its all about.
We would be disappointed if we didn't make it into the semis, but in saying that, we haven't exactly put in a hell of lot of work for this. We have done one day of practice in the last year, since the last Steinlager/Line 7. To try to excel in these boats, we would have to spend more time at it, but with the testing programmes and the black boats taking precedence right now, it's been very hard to find the time. I've had a lot of other commitments to sponsors, and so it has been difficult to do it although we realise we have to put more emphasis on the racing side and that's the next stage of our campaign.

Team New Zealand is doing pretty well in this competition - three out of the top four places.
We obviously have to be pleased with the level of the sailing of our team. To think that we can have three teams here contending for the top four spots at the moment is certainly a good sign for us. We know we have a very good base and the in-house racing that we value very highly will be of a good level. It will be the biggest factor for us leading into 2003.

How important do you rate match racing in the whole of an America’s Cup campaign?
We did a lot of it up to 2000 because we thought it was going to be the biggest difference. We believed the boats were going to be very much the same in terms of performance, and that the biggest edge was going to be in how well the boats were sailed. However, that might not have been the case last time as much as we had thought, but this time we will definitely see a match racing event. It will be a pretty amazing spectacle in 75 foot boats.

Your strategies last time, which were based on match racing principles, were almost immaculate. The way you put them against your opponent was top class, and that, I suppose, is what you are trying to do this time?
The first stage is in familiarising the new guys with the boat, so we are working the crew level up in both boats to the stage that we can go out and race the boats well. We aren't in a position where we can have any major damage, we are nowhere near as financially secure as some of these other teams, so if we break any gear or have any big problems, we are going to struggle. So we are training to sail the boats well and then move into racing mode when we are ready.

You have been well known for the management of your funding in the past, and I presume that you are still using the strategy and the system this time.
We have found that it is increasingly difficult to get the funding. We are very fortunate in having our "Family of Five" sponsors coming back on board for a bigger financial ask this time. We have still a long way to go in securing the supporting sponsorships, but it is a lot more promising than it was six months ago. We are happy with where we are. At least we know we can keep going sailing, and that's the most important thing, but it is never going to be like a lot of the other teams. They have just the one backer and can do just about anything they want.

Back to this event, are you going to do anything different in this round robin to what you did in the last one?
We never really change our style. We like to sail consistently well and we accept that we are going to lose from time to time, but just hope that we don't lose too many. This round robin will be incredibly close again and to get into the semis, we will have to step it up a level from the way we sailed the first round.

I wish you luck.