Two seasons hard graft

Ian Williams discusses his victory at the Bermuda Gold Cup

Putting his career as a solicitor on hold, Ian Williams at the beginning of last season chose to embark on a full-time career on the international match racing circuit. After just over 18 months on the campaign trail, Williams yesterday earned his most significant match race win to date at the King Edward VII Gold Cup in Bermuda.

The event for Williams was a nail biter. Amid the electrical storms of the first day on Hamilton harbour, saw them go 4-1 up subsequently losing their last two races in the round robins. "We really only just scraped through the first round," admitted Williams. In the quarter-finals they found themselves pitched against Tour regular, Swede Bjorn Hansen, who they finally beat 3-2. "We were winning the starts there but he was sailing the boat a little faster than us, so it was a case of trying to hold him off," continues Williams.

Their passage through the semi-finals was easier defeating Switzerland's Eric Monnin, who seemed to have run out of steam having come fresh from a magnificent quarter-final victory over Luna Rossa skipper James Spithill. "We were able to outsail him in pretty much every aspect," says Williams of that encounter. "So we won reasonably comfortably, 3-0 although one race was very close all the way to the finish. And then into the final the key for us was the starts."



Two-nil up going into the third race of the final yesterday and it looked like it was pretty much done and dusted for the British team, coming off the line ahead and having put a penalty on the other finallist, Mathieu Richard. However the French team, comprising Richard, Greg Evrard, OIlivier Herledant and Yannick Simon, staged a dramatic come back. "We made some gains early in the first beat and then we chose to split to the right which had been paying all day and the shift went against us and he came right back into it and he rounded the top mark right behind us," Williams takes up the story. "Then he did a great job: he started to roll us down the run and we got to the bottom and we took him past the layline but that meant he could shake off his penalty. We were still ahead but he was close behind, then up the next beat he managed to work a split to the right and he came out ahead out of that. All credit to him, he did a great job and came back." 2-1.

In the final race Williams again won the start but the French team were always in contact and on the final run towards the finish it looked like they might level the score. Williams recounts what happened: "Around the top mark he came down with a little bit of pressure and soaked down inside us on port and we both gybed at the same time, below the layline for the finish line and it was a little bit pin-biased so he was looking favourite, but we managed to hang in low with our air clear to leeward of him for two or three minutes and then suddenly we got headed, both of us at the same time, and we managed to get back up and come round the front and take clear air , which was the moment that we really won it." 3-1, a large Gold trophy with their name on it and a cheque for $25,000, the result.

Critics will of course point out that this year's Bermuda Gold Cup didn't include a particularly impressive field. The only Cup names competing were defending champion James Spithill and Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team's Jes Graham-Hansen, also a past winner of the event. There were none of the Coutts, Barkers, Gilmours, Dicksons (although brother Scott was sailing), Bairds or Holmbergs to contend with. We are of course within a year of the next America's Cup, but one wonders whether the reduced prize money on offer this year may have also had an affect on the field. This year's purse was $50,000, half that available in 2005.

For Williams, the money is shared among his crew and it helps go towards campaign costs. The amount is similar to the 20,000 Euros he won for finishing second at Elba earlier this year. The main bonus in winning the Bermuda Gold Cup he says is the prestige it brings. Outside of the America's Cup itself it is one of the world's oldest match race events, the oldest in one designs. It dates back to 1938 and Wiliams reckons he was its 69th winner.

So is he making money as a full time match racer yet? "I am going to announce a sponsor this week, and hopefully when that happens it will all come together so at least I am not losing money!" admits Williams. "At the moment I am still doing as good a deal for my crew as I can. For me it is not about making money, it is about doing as well as I can and improving my reputation and obviously winning this is a massive leap forward in that respect."

Following his win in Bermuda Williams now leads the World Match Racing Tour although they are only four events into a 14 event series, the present Tour effectively lasting 18 months so that it finishes at the year end rather than the previous arrangement when it ended mid-summer at the Swedish Match Cup in Sweden.

"The Tour points are stacked heavily in favour of winning events, so winning this one puts us ahead of the tour, and the ISAF rankings are heavily stacked towards getting top results in events too, and so I think this result will up us significantly in the world rankings as well." Williams has been hovering around fifth place in the ISAF rankings for almost a year now, but the latest have him lying 7th. This win is likely to put him back up to fourth or fifth behind Sebastien Col, Paolo Cian, Peter Gilmour and Chris Dickson.



In Bermuda Williams was sailing with his team of Mark Nicholls, Gerry Mitchell and Bill Hardesty. This are part of his squad of six regulars including his brother Mark and Simon Shaw. For the next event on the World Match Race Tour, the Allianz Cup in San Francisco they will be joined on the J/105s being used for that event by burly Dane Chresten Plinius, who was sailing with Jes Gram-Hansen this week.

Having stuck at this for almost two seasons now, Williams says they have obviously been improving. "What we established pretty early on when we started the match racing circuit is that we were not sailing the boats fast enough to beat the top guys, so we have worked very hard in the last year to learn just to sail faster and we have been very successful in that. The last four or five events we have been fast but we have started so well and it was nice here that it all came together. We were sailing the boat fast and smooth, but also in the starts it came together. So that made a big difference."

Next year Williams will continue on the Tour with the aim of winning it at the end of 2007, having finished second overall last year. "If I can keep my guys together and maintain a top level crew then I think I have a good chance of doing that," he says.

The prospects will be made easier with the America's Cup now only a few months away, however the present World Match Racing Tour factors in this in to an extent. Discards have been introduced with eight races counting towards the final Tour result and it is possible for those competing in the Cup to sail eight Tour events in 2007 after the action has come to a close in Valencia.