Barker breaks a rig

...but it wasn't his new crew Ed Peel's fault, says the 49er pensioner. Andy Rice reports

They say that no apprenticeship in the Star class is complete without breaking a mast or two, so new boy Ian Barker got his in early. It was day one of his new Olympic campaign with Ed Peel, the 6ft 8in giant appointed to crew for Barker in his bid to add Athens gold to Sydney silver. Just last week in fact.

"There was 28 knots of wind down at Weymouth," explains 'Billy' Barker, "so we were in a lot of wind already and then there was a gust on top of that. Next thing we knew the mast had bent over the front. We discovered later that the runner rope had jumped out of the cleat. The deck can bend at that point when it is under load, and so when the load came on, the cleat changed angle and the rope popped out." So not operator error then, but expensive all the same. "We might be able to bend the mast back and use it for training," says Barker hopefully.

The Hamble-based Welshman had hoped to get a few more days in down at the one-week RYA training camp in Portland Harbour, but that incident curtailed his training. Now he is packing up his boat ready for shipping over to Miami for a winter of warm weather training. Barker is looking forward to a steep learning curve, but Peel's will be even steeper.

Peel came through a trial which Barker set up to pick the most suitable of 10 candidates who put themselves up for selection. At 6ft 8in and 115kg, Peel has the physical attributes for the job. At just 22 years old, he is young enough not to know too much of the knee and other physical complaints that can beset the Star crew later on in life. And born and bred in the small keelboat scene of the Isle of Wight, Peel is familiar with various classes like the Redwing, Dragon and the Etchells 22, even if he knows little about the Star.

But Peel has experienced nothing of the rigours of Olympic sailing and needs to get in the gym according to Barker. "He needs to weight train to improve his strength and size. There may be a reduction in the total weight limit for the Star, but until that is voted through we have to assume Ed will need to put on about 8kg in muscle. Then he'll be the ideal size."

Barker has set himself some tough objectives for the next year, although the near-term ones are simply "working out which ropes to pull when". He can draw on some experienced names here, including coach David Howlett who represented Britain in the Star at the Barcelona Games in 1992. He expects to spend the first couple of weeks sorting out the rough edges on their boathandling, and use the next few months in Miami to build up speed knowledge and race experience in a series of high profile regattas in that part of the world.

The ultimate goal for next year, however, is a pretty tough one - "ideally a top three in the Worlds, but definitely a top 10". Another newcomer to the class Freddie Loof has proved that you can make the transition pretty quickly. The Finn bronze medallist of last year won the Europeans and the Worlds all in one year. And Ian Walker won a silver medal after just 18 months in the class. So with the Worlds in Los Angeles next September, Barker's high target is not out of the question.