Turning pro

Taking six months off from work, Ian Williams describes the plight of a budding pro British match racer

Cushioned neatly between Russell Coutts and Jes Gram-Hansen in eighth place in ISAF's World Match Rankings is Britain's top skipper in this field, Ian Williams, today racing his second day of round robins at the Swedish Match Tour's Match Race Germany.

A solicitor by profession, Ian Williams has just begun a six month sabbatical to see how he gets on as a full time match race skipper. The ISAF rankings are such that it is possible to start hitting the high scores by winning Grade 2 and 3 events. By taking largely this approach Williams has been hovering within the top 10 in the world for the last year.

To get ahead in match racing one has to get the all-important invites to events. Fortunately being in the ISAF top 10, Williams says, has made life a lot easier for him. "We are ranked eighth in the World now so most of the events aren’t a problem for invites," he says. "Some of the Swedish Match Tour ones are still quite tough to get invites for and I had to take a bit of a punt in terms of taking the time off and hoping to get the invites. We have been invited to Germany and to Swedish Match Cup and I am still hoping to get an invite to ACI Cup, but that hasn’t come through yet. Unfortunately Toscana we weren’t invited to, but they have a pretty all-star line-up. I haven’t approached Portugal yet, but it is the same sort of thing - it is a high prize money event so it will attract the America’s Cup teams which tend to get preferential treatment."

The good news about the international match racing circuit is that there is no shortage of events if one looks internationally or even just around Europe. "Over the six months that I am off, half the weeks have got an event in, so it can be quite a full program," continues Williams. "I will do a bit of other sailing as well but it also gives a bit of time to put some practice in which is the thing I am looking forward to most. It has always been turning up to events just a little bit unprepared in terms of having sailed the type of boats we are sailing at the events, whereas I am hoping this year, particularly for the bigger events, to turn up having at least sailed that type of boat before."

One of the goals for Williams this year is to put in a good result at ISAF World Match Racing Championship this year being held in Calpe, just north of Alicante in southern Spain in September. "Timing-wise it fits in quite well as it is towards the end of my sabbatical," says Williams. "We would have had a lot of time to practise by then to get going as a team, and to get a good result there is one of the main aims of the year."

So where will this all lead? Many of the Danish pro-match racers such as Jes Gram-Hansen and Jesper Radich have been forced to live on a shoe-string as they cross and recross Europe moving from event to event. Prize money can be good, but not good enough to live on. "My goal for this six months is not to earn a living, but to go out and do it as well as I can and live on the money I have saved up and then take a view at the end of the summer about the next stage," says Williams.

While Russell Coutts and his team won 25,000 Euros at Elba last weekend, should Williams beat the likes of newbie match racer Ben Ainslie, Soling Gold medallist Jesper Bank, Alinghi's Ed Baird, match race and America's Cup veteran Peter Gilmour or BMW Oracle Racing's Bertrand Pace at Match Race Germany this week then he could win 6,000 Euros.

Another possibility is to get sponsorship along the Peter Gilmour lines, who has backing from the Japanese Pizza company, Pizza La). "I think if we can get regular invites to the Swedish Match Tour, then the sponsorship angle does open up quite a lot, because they are getting quite a lot of coverage now," says Williams. "That would open up a lot more. But a lot of that is about finding the time to find a sponsor and then to service a sponsor, but that is certainly something we’ll be looking at when I have a bit more time."

Ultimately of course he could get signed by an America's Cup team. "If I was to make enough a mark on the racing circuit I would be of benefit to an America’s Cup team. It is something I want to do," says Williams.

Oddly there are not that many sailors in the America's Cup who have successfully made the transition from the match racing circuit, although young Australian James Spithill is one lucky exception and Danish blade Jesper Radich is now on board with the Desafio Espanol America's Cup team. Most Cup crews have either done the Cup before or they are recruited from Olympic sailing.

"The Olympic way is a better way into it," says Williams. "Unfortunately for me that route for me was closed off when they dropped the Soling. But there are some opportunities through the match racing and doing some big boat sailing to get involved with the America’s Cup".

While big boat sailing is not on the cards this year due to time constraints, Williams says that he plans to do more of this in 2006.

This summer Williams will be sailing with a core crew of Mark Nicholls, Iain Percy's Star crew Steve Mitchell and his brother Mark Williams. "I am doing a lot with those three and then I have other people that come in when they can’t make it or we need other people," he says.

Unfortunately they don't have the resources to employ a coach, although the discipline and approach Mitchell has learned from his Olympic training will no doubt come in handy. "In the past when match racing was Olympic there was more support from the RYA. Although they do support me when they can, there isn’t really any funding for it."