Two in a row

Bahrian Team Pindar skipper Ian Williams on winning his second consecutive World Match Racing Championship

He’s done it again! Having last year become the first Brit ever to be World Match Racing world champion, Ian Williams and his Bahrain Team Pindar crew of Simon Shaw, Gerry Mitchell, Mark Nicholls, Richard Sydenham and Mal Parker successfully defended their title, joining a small elite, alongside the likes of Ed Baird, Russell Coutts, Chris Dickson and Peter Gilmour, to have won the World Champonship twice (in fact they have all won it three times, with the exception of Gillie who holds the record with four wins - the likes of Dean Barker, James Spithill, Jesper Bank, Bertrand Pace and Karol Jablonski have only won it once).

“We are ecstatic to have brought it home again,” Williams told thedailysail. “Just like last year, it went down to the wire and it could have gone either way as often match racing events do.”

Going into Monsoon Cup, the final event on the 2008 World Match Racing Tour, Williams led the field but only four points ahead of Sebastien Col and 15 in front of the ever-threatening Mathieu Richard. This situation was made no happier when at the end of the round robin in Malaysia, Richard was holding fourth spot, with Williams in fifth and Col seventh.

“They have this system in Malaysia, where the winner of the round robin gets to choose their opponent,” recounts Williams. “Because Mathieu and us were fourth and fifth we expected to be put together with them, but Paolo, who won [the Round Robin] ended up choosing the guy who was third- Adam Minoprio - and Torvar [Mirsky] chose Magnus [Holmberg] who was sixth which gave Richard a choice – and he chose us.”

With a 15 point deficit to make up, Richard had to dispatch both Williams and Col before the final to win the 2009 Championship. In the end Williams demolished his French rival 3-0 in the quarter-finals while Col lost to Peter Gilmour (who then went on to win the Monsoon Cup) after a technical protest. With both Richard and Col out of contention, so Williams was crowned the 2009 World Match Racing Champion.

Having been put together by Peter Gilmour, the Monsoon Cup is now the pinnacle of the World Match Racing Tour, the final event of the season where the Tour is decided and carrying the second highest prize money (roughly $295,000 compared to $300,000 at the new event this year in Korea).



Run out of Kuala Terengganu for the fourth year this year, the event has come on considerably since year one when it was run out of two marquees. Now in this location there is a large leisure resort and a purpose-built stadium where spectators can watch the match racing

“The purpose-built building they have got there, is great for us,” says Williams. “It means we get our own sailors lounge and there are meeting rooms based around that, where we can go and do our own thing, away from the other sailors. Then there is a big hangar where they did the prizegiving, where they had a big exhibition for all the spectators and there are other corporate hospitality suites around the building.”

As a racing venue it is tough, based on a river with the Terengganu Heritage Bay Club on an island in the middle and this year extra flood water resulted in the current at times running up over 3 knots pushing the boats upwind. Fortunately this year there was more wind (around 15-17 knots for the final weekend) than the typical 10-12 knots.

“There was relief from it particularly on left side looking upwind, which meant it was very important to win the start, because that enabled you to push the other boat, out into the less favourable current upwind.”

However several highly accomplished sailors including Ben Ainslie, Peter Gilmour and Torvar Mirksy had encounters with the committee boat or its anchor chain during races.

“Obviously it needed a long anchor line to hold in the current and it was easy to misjudge,” explains Williams. “We got very close to hitting it more than once. As a helmsman, you see the boat going towards the committee boat and you assume subconsciously that you have got steerage, because all your senses are telling you that you are going forward, and then what happens is that you suddenly come to turn the boat and you realise that you are actually stationary in the water, there’s just the current sweeping you on to the boat and you can’t turn out of the way. We came within inches of the committee boat in three of our starts.”

Looking back, the 2008 season in general for Williams and his Bahrain Team Pindar has been one of consistency rather than highlights. This year their only win was at the Danish Open. “What we have done much better than anyone, was consistently make semi-finals. In some ways it was fitting that by making the semi-final that we won the world tour, although in slightly bizarre circumstances.”

The downside of the lack of wins, means a large trophy and lots of prestige to come home with, but not the significant amount of cash prizes the team earned last year.

For this season Williams had changed tacticians from Bill Hardesty to Richard Sydenham and this allowed them to train more in Europe (Hardesty being based in the US). “I think that has helped a lot,” says Williams. “And just the usual improving and moving forward. The standard is going up all the time. The teams that are on the tour are taking it more and more professionally. The French came on very strong this year with a new Federation team sponsor and that is why they are particularly strong, but also with no Cup this year a few of the teams that came on as well put a bit more focus into it like Paolo Cian, Sebastien Col and Magnus Holmberg.”

Obviously Williams plans to return to defend his title again in 2009 and possibly draw level with Baird, Coutts and Dickson in terms of World Match Racing Championship wins.

Next season the Tour has improved the way the invitation system works for events. Rather than being entirely arbitrary, instead the top eight sailors in the rankings get an immediate invite to all the events. This allows the top teams to plan in advance, as well as get sponsorship in place, that has previously been hard, while still allowing lower ranked sailors to race their way into events.

“We have been pretty relaxed as world champions this year, we were very confident that we’d be invited to each of the top events because everyone wants the World Champion at their event, but it wasn’t so long ago that we were ranked in the top five in the ISAF ranking when we weren’t sure we were going to be invited to the next event and that is a very difficult position for a team to be in. In that respect it is in some ways bad for us this new system as world champions being able to organise your year maybe has been a little bit of an advantage. But that is not an advantage we seek and I am very happy that there will be eight very strong teams next year fighting it out.”



In the meantime Williams is focussing on his next big event – the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series where he has signed up to skipper the China Team boat. The team, is still backed by Chaoyong Wang but with Stuart James bumped up from Chief Marketing Officer to Executive Director and no longer an association with the French Le Defi.

The line-up for Auckland included most of Williams’ Bahrain Team Pindar crew with the exception of Gerry Mitchell. At present the crew line-up is:

Jim Turner – Mid Grind
Mal Parker – Downwind Trimmer
Sean Couvreaux – Bow
Keats Kealy – Mid-Bow
Matt Smith – Pit
Brett Jones – Upwind Trimmer
Sean Clarkson – Main Trimmer
Ed Smythe – Traveller
William Wu - Mast
Wang Jue - Forward Grind
Wen Pei - Aft Grind
Chris Main – Strategist
Mark Nicholls – Pit/Runner
Richard Sydenham – Tactician
Simon Shaw – Navigator

So, a much stronger cast than appeared on the boat in Valencia. “Particularly we have been looking for crew with a lot of Cup boat experience. Obviously the training time in boats is very short, so it will be important to have the experience particularly in terms of getting the boat round the course, because not only the training time short, but the courses will be short,” says Williams.

While saying this, the Louis Vuitton Pacific Cup will be the first occasion Williams has helmed a Cup boat in anger, although he has helmed one before, only not in a race. “It is obviously a much bigger boat and the real point is that you have 17 people on board who have to be doing the same thing at the same time and for me that is the real challenge - organising and managing the team as a skipper. For sure that is going to be a huge challenge.”

What remains up in the air at present is China Team’s involvement in the 33rd America’s Cup. According to Williams they are very keen to progress, but at present are waiting for more clarity regarding the court case and the date and venue. “Certainly I don’t think they are doing the Louis Vuitton series just as a one off. They view it as the start of a new China Team for the 33rd America’s Cup.”