Ainslie update

The Round the Island this week, following by a summer with Alfa Romeo and then some more match racing...

Thursday June 18th 2009, Author: James Boyd, Location: United Kingdom
With the present hiatus in the America’s Cup, so TeamOrigin skipper and helmsman and newly anointed CBE, Ben Ainslie would have a little more time on his hands you might think. However despite the lack of any progress on the Cup front, his sailing program has miraculously filled itself up including many events where he and his crew will be flying the TeamOrigin flag, despite Sir Keith Mills’ cup campaign being all but wound down.

In this weekend’s JPMorgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, if you see a two hulled blur of blue, black and white shooting past you, then it could well the TeamOrigin cat on which Ainslie will be helming alongside team boss Mike Sanderson, big George Skuados and Matt Cornwall. “The only guy who has sailed on the boat before is Catflap [Cornwall],” says Ainslie. “So it might make some good photo shots…”

Most recently Ainslie has been revitalising his participation on the World Match Racing Tour. This he does as part of TeamOrigin with Iain Percy calling tactics (although the Star Gold medallist helm has been spotting from time to time in front of the mast…), Cornwall once again doing bow and with former Peter Gilmour crewman Mike Mottl and ex-Luna Rossa trimmer Christian Kamp in the middle.

Ainslie and the TeamOrigin posse got off to a fine start to their 2009 Tour winning Match Race Germany at the end of May.

“Germany was interesting,” says Ainslie. “The first day, we had a really tough day. I guess the boats there are very different being big heavy cruising boats. So it took a while to get our heads around that. We didn’t sail that well. But then on in, the breeze came up a bit, we got a bit of confidence back and started sailing really well and took it all the way through to the finals. So that was fantastic.”

Having won Match Race Germany on the Monday by Wednesday, Ainslie and his crew were out on the water again, this time in Korea at the Korea Match Cup to the southwest of Seoul, while trying to fend off nervous exhaustion and jetlag. At this Ainslie was doing well and romped through the quarter finals before being roundly despatched 3-0 by Italian Paolo Cian, in unbeatable form, in the semis.

One aspect of the World Match Racing Tour that Ainslie is having to get use to is very rapidly having to master the different boats they are presented with to sail that differs from regatta to regatta. For example in Germany they raced Bavaria 35 cruisers while in Korea they were proper 36ft race boats, in Bermuda they will sail ancient long keel International One Designs .

“Everyone says the Tour is about learning the new boats as quickly as possible. I guess in a way it rewards the guys who are consistent and keep coming back and learning each year. For some of us, in news boats it is a steeper learning curve but that is part of the game.”



Hence why some of the match race purists were suggesting that for the 2012 Games, the women’s match race boat shouldn’t be announced until the last possible moment.

Despite being at present second on the World Match Racing Tour leaderboard behind Adam Minoprio, Ainslie is in fact taking a break from the Tour for the summer and will miss four events, before rejoining it for the final three: Brazil, the King Edward VII Gold Cup in Bermuda and then the big daddy Monsoon Cup event in Malaysia in December. Missing the middle of the season will mean his chances of winning the Tour are decided limited. “Really the goal for us this year is just to keep our hand in in the match racing and keep improving. We are still a relatively new team among the five of us. We are trying to work on those relationships.”

As to what the exact nature of his relationship with TeamOrigin is at present, Ainslie hedges slightly. “As has been stated with TeamOrigin, it is still the intention to do the next Cup as and when it happens, so we are trying to do everything we can to support Keith to do it. If TeamOrigin is doing the next Cup and doing it properly, that’s where I’ll be.”

While there was a plan earlier in the year for TeamOrigin to get hold of Neville Crichton’s newly rebuilt Mini Maxi Alfa Junior and blast along flying the flag in the Rolex Fastnet Race, this isn’t coming to pass, although a strong tie-up between Crichton’s campaigns and TeamOrigin-affiliated sailors is still happening. The relationship between Crichton and Ainslie pre-dates TeamOrigin. The Sydney-based uber car importer has previously supported Ainslie with his Olympic campaigns. And this year Ainslie will sail the Transpac and Rolex Sydney Hobart on the Alfa Romeo supermaxi with her mainly Australian crew, while a more strongly TeamOrigin crew, including Mike Sanderson, are set to sail the Alfa Junior mini maxi at Copa del Rey in August, followed by the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup.


Ben with Mum Sue, Niece Tansy and Dad Roddy at Buckingham Palace last week to receive the CBE

So, the Transpac, down the warm tradewinds to Hawaii on one of the world’s fastest supermaxis….the bastard. “I am looking forward to that. It will be great,” agrees Ainslie, while admitting it will be the longest race he has done by quite some way. “I really enjoy sailing on that boat. It is a beautiful boat to sail.” There is also a strong possibility of the big Alfa claiming the Transpac record, or ‘barn door’ as it is known for some reason.

Meanwhile Alfa Junior after chine-related handling issues came to light last year, along with other Reichel-Pugh designs of this vintage such as Bella Mente and Moneypenny, has effectively had a new hull put under her at McConaghys in China and should be back in Europe ready to go a couple of weeks before Copa del Rey. “Neville is really happy with the changes they’ve made,” says Ainslie. “Looking at the numbers it sounds good, so we’ll see. We just have to get it tuned up and sailing well.”

Interspersed between all this, Ainslie still has an eye on the Finn, and although he says he won’t be competing in any events this year, such as the Gold Cup coming up in Copenhagen next month, he is working with the technical team at the RYA to see if there are more ways to improve it. Ainslie reckons his first event back in the Finn may be the Gold Cup next year.

While he was briefly considering a Star campaign for 2012, he reckons there probably isn’t time. “I’d love to sail a Star, but it would be tough to take on Bart [Andrew Simpson] and Iain competitively and with our situation with the Cup it is totally the wrong thing to be doing. I really enjoy sailing the Finn - it is a good physical challenge, it keeps me in shape. And the young guys are doing really well - Giles Scott, Ed Wright and Andrew Mills. It is fantastic to have those guys doing so well, to have some competition to push you along.”

Coach-wise Jez Fanstone has gone Kiwi and is now working for the NZ Olympic team, and this will see the welcome return of David Howlett as Ainslie’s coach for 2012.

Aside from all this, Ainslie briefly did some Etchells racing in Australia this year with America’s cup legend John Bertrand. “I met John Bertrand when he was down at the Finn Gold Cup we had in Melbourne in January last year and we got on really well and I had a bit of time after Auckland and he asked if I could do it with Andrew Palfrey. I really enjoyed it. It is a great team and a great class. It is definitely one for the future – good racing, 80 odd boats and there are some good young guys in the class.”

But what he, like so many, hope for is that there is some ray of light for a multi-challenger America’s Cup in the future, that will allow TeamOrigin to gun for something.

“It is still a good year despite the nightmare-ish situation with the Cup. That is all we can do: Leave those guys to it and get on with your own life. Keith [Sir Keith Mills] is amazing. I sometimes can’t believe he is still in the game. That is the biggest shame out of all of this is that someone like that, who is such a good guy and a good guy to have in the sport and who has so much credibility in the business world and the sporting world with the IOC, just gets messed around by the Cup. You kind of wish that more could be done to sort the situation out, maybe with ISAF. You look at other sports and you couldn’t possibly conceive that this would happen in what is supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport of yacht racing.”

Here here.

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