Ben Ainslie

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

In the five months he has been with the team Ainslie has been racking up the air miles between Seattle and OneWorld's training camp in Auckland. During training and as Ainslie has been finding his feet, Gilmour has been making him work in a variety of different positions on board - from the helm, to tactics, strategy, to the heads-up person looking for shifts to doing the runners. Gilmour jokes that he has even been seen on the foredeck a couple of times.

"Initially when we started the more experienced guys knew where they were going to be on board," says Ainslie. "With the young people it has been a case of try to see where they fit in best." Now he has been sailing with the team for a few months he sees his role on board as being tactician and strategist. "Up until now it's been going really well! But we're still far from finalising positions on the boats."

He says he is surprised by just how physical sailing these boats is. This includes unfamiliar acts for a dinghy sailor such as grinding (although he seems to breathe a sigh of relief when he says he is 30kg too light to be a grinder) to simply loading heavy sails on board the boat every morning. "You have to be in shape. I'm amazed how professional the people in the team are. They know they need to be in shape or they won't be on the boat."

OneWorld ran into financial difficulties with the crash of technology shares in the US which saw billions wiped off the value of their sponsor American telecoms guru Craig McCaw. For a time the OneWorld campaign was put into a holding pattern and looked like it might fold. These were worrying times for Ainslie who started to wonder whether the move to Seattle had been a good one. "We had a scary time, but it has pulled people closer together. Due to the people involved and their commitment to keeping the thing going it's actually turned into a positive thing."

OneWorld's skipper and America's Cup veteran, Peter Gilmour, is clearly impressed with his protege. "He is a real talent. He certainly enjoys match racing. He had a race against Chris Law in Monaco. He won by a boat length and was physically shaking at the end of it. He's completely addicted to it now." Gilmour feels that Ainslie has the perfect attributes for his role at OneWorld. "He is extremely hard working in terms of his focus and he has a lovely personality off the water. He is a balanced person and incredibly mature for his tender age. On the water he is a fierce competitor - losing doesn't come into his repertoire."

Read about Ainslie's plans beyond the Cup on page 3...