The wise man of New Zealand sailing

The Daily Sail catches up with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's Harold Bennett

New Zealanders, be it in the former of pseudo-Swiss or pseudo American or the real thing, skippered the two boats in not only the America's Cup, but the Louis Vuitton finals too, raising the perennial question - why is does New Zealand produce so many top yachtsmen?

Part of the reason is down to the training many of these top sailors have received. Early successes have come in the youth program run by New Zealand's national sailing body, Yachting New Zealand (formerly the New Zealand Yachting Federation). Now there is the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's Youth program. Central to both of these is Harold Bennett, who has become better known in recent weeks as the Chief race officer for the America's Cup.

Bennett was National Youth Coach for in New Zealand in the 1970s. Under his tuition at this stage were the likes of Chris Dickson. They achieved considerable success with Dickson winning the World Youth Championships for three consecutive years from 1978-80, followed in 1981 by one Russell Coutts.

“I had Russell when I was National Youth Coach for the country,” recalls Bennett of his star pupil. “There was him, Murray Jones, Chris Dickson, and I ran with those guys offshore for 10 years doing Youth Championships. A lot of those guys became household names.” Since then the youth program has changed a lot and it doesn’t operate how it used to, says Bennett.

Bennett was a trainer to the KZ7 team in the 1987 America’s Cup, and coming back from this joined the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron to set up their Youth Keelboat program, similar to the Volvo-backed affair recently set up by the RYA.

"We had so many good sailors in this country, but no one understood about long term campaigns and we felt the ideal way to deal with that was to set up a youth training program that would educate young people about the fundamentals about campaigns,” recalls Bennett. "It came from a discussion which Michael Fay and I had in Perth. Then there was a committee member, Richard Endean - he got on to the idea as well and got the General Committee of the Squadron to agree to have a look at it.

"It was a properly organised program which gave them all those skills about campaigning,” he continues. “We wanted to take people with some sailing skills that wanted to progress further. It was a race training program. Taking those with experience and turning them into people who were quite competent at not only sailing but also being involved with a campaign.”

Over the 15-16 years it has been running its graduates include numerous Olympians, America's Cup and Whitbread/Volvo crew, some in key positions. They include Prada’s Gavin Brady and OneWorld’s Kelvin Harrap, Mark Christensen and Team New Zealand's Chris Ward and James Dagg. More recently pretender to Dean Barker's throne, Cameron Appleton, has passed through the scheme.

Open to 16-20 year olds, the RNZYS's annual training program still runs using the club's fleet of Elliott 5.9s.

"This programme is very unique," says Bennett. "There is schedule of everything that happens. It starts in May each year and starts with basic training drills and skills in the boats and they really don't get to race them for six months, and then they go through a race programme where they do match racing and fleet racing. We get them involved in the bigger boat like the MRXs here and put them into teams for the National Match Racing Championships and the National Keelboat Championships."

The annual squad is 34 strong with 30 sailing and four running the chase boats and acting as back up for guys who are not there. It is funded entirely by sponsorship and runs every weekend over the course of 12 months.

"It is a multitude of stuff," says Bennett of the curriculum. "It is quite a comprehensive program, learning how to do bear away sets, gybe sets and the different hoists and different drops and then goes into racing."

Qualification is largely by word of mouth. "Young people who feel they want to be part of it - they come and apply, they have an interview so we find out whether they want to be in this or want to do something else and as long as they have some sort of sailing experience and they want to move on and are keen about keelboat, we take them on."

Team New Zealand helm Dean Barker didn’t pass through the RNZYS scheme coming from a dinghy background. “The guys who were the top of the dinghies didn’t pass through this program. Dean did his World Youth Championship in Laser, so when he came to do the next stage he was too old.”

Today if you are a Kiwi teenager wanting to get ahead in sailing, you have the choice of following the dinghy route, culminating in an Olympic program or you can go through Bennett’s program at the RNZYS. “The country itself is full of outstanding people who can develop their own skills. But any organised program who can pick those people up who are tyring to do that find that they end up with some outstanding sailors, because they are prepared to listen and want to get there."

To find Coutts, Dickson and Barker top of the pile in the America's Cup comes as no surprise to Bennett. "I wouldn’t have expected anything other than that because those people are all outstanding yachtsmen. I have said for a long time that the two most outstanding yachtsmen in this country are Chris Dickson and Russell Coutts and in latter times Dean Barker is starting to fill a role like that. So it is not surprising to the three of them are at the pinnacle of the sport."

So why them not Americans or other nations? “I think there is a different attitude among people here. Our people tend to have a greater understanding and input into the complete package, in other words the engineering of the boat, the understanding of the boat as well as being a bloody good sailors, they can do all the other things too and know when something’s not right.”

So how does that happen? “I think it is instinctive. We have always had that tag of being do-it-yourselfers in this country. All of us at some stage have had a boat but we would have built the boat ourselves be it a dinghy or a keelboats. So you get a good understanding of what you’ve got. So I think the reason behind New Zealanders being so good is that i) we are surrounded by water, ii) in Auckland you can sail all year round in and iii) we have such a unique way of ensuring that we have the best in that you develop it yourself and you have a full understanding of what you've got.

"Okay, you don’t see Russell Coutts getting his hands dirty, but he understands what that means and he can say “that well I don’t think that’s right, you need to do this…” Russell is an engineer by profession and your engineering mind works all the time with that.”

Over the last 4-5 years Bennett’s role within the Club has changed and he is currently Assistant General Manager with an admin role and responsibility for running the yacht racing, including the America’s Cup.

"I think there is mixed feelings about it," says Bennett of their recent loss of both match and accompanying silverware. "Well there’s a general feeling it's a shame we lost it. There are some people saying it is good to see it go, so maybe we'll become a yacht club again and not a public centre. The Cup’s been sitting here. There are people all day long coming in and out of here. So the Club was not a club. But I think there is a general sadness it has gone. I am a realist when it comes to sport. You can win. You can lose. We’ve just lost one. Get over it."

He says he can't comment about Team New Zealand. "I can say that I felt that Alinghi were always going to be hard because they had the core of the 2000 team. I think Russell Coutts is the most outstanding yachtsman in the world. I admire him for hat he has done and he got what he deserves. Fair and square, he' done a nice job. They sailed superbly and they were the better team on the day."

Out on the water, Bennett says he knew a great number of people on both Alinghi and Team New Zealand. “In some ways that helped me more than anything because I knew everyone on both sides and they knew how I operated and they tried me on, trying to get me to do things I didn’t want to, sail up and past the committee boat saying “we think we can race now”. But it’s all a game. I just did what I agreed to do for them all.”

He says he would have much rather raced under the new protocol announced by Alinghi. "The protocol this time and 2000 had really been written to favour the defender. But I just had to carry out the rules and you are snookered with them. What they are proposing now is much better. I would love to have had that for this event because we would have had the races over quicker.

"And of course Brad and Russell wrote that protocol before they left Team New Zealand. They wrote that prior to 2000. Brad spent more time doing that - that was really his part of the game."

One wonders whether or not the new America's Cup race organisation will be finding a spot for their former mentor.

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