Ben Ainslie

James Boyd caught up with our Laser Gold medallist at Marstrand to talk about big boats, America's Cup and future plans

With a Gold Medal in Sydney and a Silver in the Laser at Atlanta, Ben Ainslie, at the grand old age of 24, is currently Britain's top Olympic sailor.

Some gin was spilled just before Christmas when Ainslie agreed to join Peter Gilmour's Craig McCaw-backed OneWorld America's Cup campaign. But the critics were quietened when it was made apparent that Ainslie's move was not of the treasonable level of the Butterworth and Coutts defections to Switzerland, but an opportunity for him to learn at the side of one of match racing's grand masters with a view to bringing this knowledge back home to the UK with him at a later date.

It was not the best time for Ainslie when madforsailing caught up with him at the Swedish Match Cup in Marstrand, Sweden. Doing mainsheet and tactics for skipper Peter Gilmour, five times winner of this premier match racing event, the team had been knocked out early in the round robins and were still reeling from the shock.

One World

For Ainslie the last few months have proved a steep learning curve. He has gone from the familiar world of British Olympic sailing, where he has many friends, the huge cushion of his mentors at the RYA and the much respected top dog position in Team GBR, to being thrust into the sharp end of an America's Cup campaign.

There he and former madforsailing editor Mark Chisnell are the only Brits; he is surrounded by a large and international group of individuals who are much older and at the very top of their respective fields (many America's Cup campaigns employ more than 100 people). For Ainslie the experience must have been rather like going to a new and rather daunting school, where you don't know the procedures but do know that those around you expect only the very best from you.

"The amount I've learned over the last five months has been incredible," Ainslie told madforsailing. He says he has had to learn everything from working with a big team to learning to sail a big America's Cup boat and unfamiliar big boat issues such as sail design to building up speed after a tack. "It is the same challenges in dinghies but at a different scale and it takes time to get used to it," he adds. "I'm almost starting from scratch. The only things I've been able to take with me from Lasers is the fitness, the ability to read the wind and the competitiveness and mental attitude which you need in any sport."

Sailing a 30 tonne America's Cup class boat otherwise bears no resemblance to his tiny Laser. "It is almost like a machine with the grinding and all the digital read-outs of the boat speed. But there is still a lot of feel."

Ainslie admits that on occasions sailing their training boats USA 55 and 51 can be quite frightening. "It can be quite scary at times, particularly at mark roundings. It's the noise. Everything is right on the limit and it seems really easy to break stuff. Fortunately the people in our team have a lot of experience and bypass many breakdowns. It's just something you have to get used to."

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