Up and coming star

The Daily Sail caught up with Land Rover Cup winner Ian Williams

With Peter Harrison's foray back into the America's Cup, it is encouraging that there is some emerging match racing talent among British sailors. Mark Campbell-James and his younger brother Paul are two to be watched. Another is Ian Williams, who at the weekend won the Land Rover Cup match racing event in the Algarve.

Williams' sailing CV is impressive with wins in the Youth Match Racing Worlds in 1994 and 1995. Since 1996 he has taken part in the every UK National Match Racing Championship, winning the event three times. In the middle of this he mounted a Soling campaign for Sydney but was ousted from the British slot by the venerable Andy Beadsworth. In the latest ISAF Match Racing rankings he is 26th, behind the younger Campbell-James but ahead of Mark and the likes of former Swedish Match Tour champion and Victory Challenge helm Magnus Holmberg.

25 years old and with Chemistry and law degree behind him from Bristol University, Williams is currently training with the giant city law firm Ashurst Morris Crisp and is humming and harring about what is next for him.

At present life is hard if you are an up-and-coming British match racer and because of this and his studies Williams has had to scale down his match racing program: "It's been quite quiet since the Soling was dropped [from the Olympics] and the funding went. I've kept it quite low profile. I've only done four events a year, which is how many count in the ISAF World Ranking system."

The downside of the low scale approach is that they have to do well at every event if they hope to stay up in the rankings. "I did the qualifier and the nationals and a grade 1 event in Finland," says Williams of his 2002 season. "We were seventh there - one win off making the semi-finals, which was quite disappointing. If you count every event, when you miss out by fine margins it makes quite a big difference. And then we did Berlin in H boats. It was nice to go back there, because last time we came sixth there in a reasonably strong field, but we were clearly not as quick as everyone else. This time by end of the regatta we were as quick if not a little bit quicker which was pleasing."

While his match race career is in a holding pattern until his training in the City ends this coming autumn, he does believe that conditions will improve for prospective match racers generally. "I think it [match racing] is a little bit resurgent now worldwide. The funding is coming from different places and a lot of the interest is based around the America's Cup. The America's Cup is getting a lot of publicity and that will increase towards the match itself. As we have already seen in the semi finals the racing is getting closer and more exciting. And I think people are becoming more aware of match racing because of that."

He of course has been following the Louis Vuitton Cup with interest. "GBR Challenge did a good job in getting there and getting some respect for way they sailed the boats. It is easy to make criticisms in hindsight - people have talked about the other boat. We don't know - they might go out and win the America's Cup next time with two keels and the people criticising wouldn't look so clever then. In terms of this Cup in hindsight it is fair to say it was a bit over ambitious to try and do something like that particularly with the time that they had...

"I guess if you're Peter Harrison and you're funding it and you are offered the option of taking this thing which has a low percentage chance of being very fast, it is more attractive as a risk, than building a similar boat which because of the time you've had to design it and the testing resources, you expect to be a bit slower than the top campaigns."

Did GBR Challenge have enough match racing talent on board? "I think they took the view that the biggest hurdle in terms of sailing was simply handing the boats. So they put their recruitment effort into people with experience of those sort of boats and obviously people big enough and strong enough to sail them.

"It is hard to say whether they struggled in terms of match racing at the Cup or whether they were just a bit slower than Stars & Stripes. It is particularly hard to get anything out of a match race particularly if you are a bit slower, because you are always trying to do something extra. Funnily enough it is often the less agressive person who comes out better in match racing situations - surprisingly so."

As a match racer he would of course ultimately like to get involved with an America's Cup campaign. "It has certainly crossed my mind when I'm in the office at 1am! But I am not in any way working towards that at the moment," he says.

In the meantime his goal is to get to go to some grade one events or taking part in the Swedish Match Tour. "I feel now that with the other sailing that I've done in the last couple of years that's been quite diverse - I've learned a lot. Going to Berlin and finding that we could sail the boats quickly [and winning the Land Rover Cup] makes me feel a bit more confidient about going to a few more grade one events and trying to compete a bit more regularly."

However with top match racing events it is not simply a case of just turning up. "The biggest difficulty with match racing is always getting invited to those events. Perhaps in 2002 it was less hard because the America's Cup teams were concentrating on that but I suspect when the Cup's over and they all come back it'll be very hard. I think it will be interesting to see how the guys who have come up through the system while the America's Cup teams have been away - get on against the AC teams when they come back. People like Karol Jabolski, who won the World Championships, Jesper Radich, Ges Gram-Hansen."



If the British Olympic program is currently the envy of the world then Denmark, oddly, is the match racing equivalent. "The set-up the Danes have is fantastic," says Williams. "I think they have a very different philosophy there. The boats are seen as a facility that the club take on and run, like a golf club would have a golf course and maintain it."

The Danish clubs fund their match race programs through corporate hospitality, so maybe there is the possibility of running something similar to this in the UK? "I did some work on some of their corporate days when BT sponsored the match racing," says Williams. "And the people who came on them had the most fantastic time. They always commented that it was much better than the golf days they'd been on and it's a pity that we don't still have that."

The results of the Danish school can be seen on the Swedish Match Tour now where Jesper Radich and Jes Gram-Hansen are regularly in the top placings despite being up against America's Cup heavyweights like Peter Holmberg, Coutts and Barker.

"Jesper Radich and Jes Gram-Hansen - they've been sailing pretty much full time since they started on the circuit in 1998/99 and they're only now really coming through. I suspect those guys are making some money, but I don't think they can live on what they're winning. At least now I suspect they're breaking even and maybe even taking home a bit of pocket money. The match racing circuit isn't a professional circuit in terms of being able to make a living, but it is a very good way to stay extremely sharp and improve your sailing skills ready for more lucrative things like the America's Cup or the grand prix big boat circuits at a lower level."

So should there be more support for match racing in the UK? Williams thinks so. "Match racing is such a strong training platform for keelboat sailing because it is so boat handing intensive. You only need two boats effectively to do it with. The biggest difficulty is that those boats have to be evenly matched otherwise it is a non-event. In terms of a youth training platform, I think match racing works extremely well which is why a lot of the top keelboat sailors came up through the match racing circuit."

Aside from his match racing programme, Williams last year campaigned a J/80 at the ISAF World Sailing Games in Marseilles. "We were really pleased with our general performance, although the result wasn't quite as we'd hoped. We felt half way through the week we were one of the two boats that could have won the event. Then on the penultimate day we took ourselves out of it, which was a bit disappointing. But it was encouraging to be the fastest boat upwind."



With his Soling crew Steve Mitchell now teamed up with Iain Percy in the Star, he has recently had his brother Mark, Mark Nichols and Joe Llewellyn sailing with him. GBR Challenge's Simon Fisher was also on board for the Land Rover Cup.

He has also recently bought a Firefly. "I did the Nationals with not a great deal of success last year... It is really good fun and it's not taken too seriously but at the same time you can learn a lot because all the boats have got the same speed - which is not very fast! But it is very close racing. which means you can learn a lot tactically. It is like any one design fleet in this country in that the people that do it are very hard to beat - they know the boats very well and they are good sailors."

Williams also enjoys taking a more relaxed approach to how he campaigns it. "It is an easy way to get on the water without having to be too organised. It is hard to commit to things when you are working hard and your weekends are particularly precious. There are times when it is nice to decide not to go to an event. If you are sailing with a serious crew on a big boat that's not really feasible."

However he is keen to do more big boat sailing. "I did the Tour Voile a year and half ago on the student boat and I think that was the most enjoyable event I've ever done. It was just such an experience doing an offshore race in a one design fleet of 40 boats. Offshore sailing often gets a bad name, because it is often in a handicap fleet and it can be very dull. But when you're doing that in a one design fleet in a 20 hour race most of the time you can see at least one other boat - it's actually a really good challenge.

"It is hard logistically, particularly because you have to have a squad," he says of what makes a good Tour Voile campaign. "It is very hard to do the whole event with the same six or seven people on the boat. So so working out when to rotate people in while keeping the consistency is what I think makes the difference. That's one of the primary reasons why Ado did so well, apart from obviously being very good at sailing the boat and the guys he had we clearly were right at the top of their game."

"I'd love to do that again but again it is a long event and it is a big time commtment."

With the Land Rover Cup out of the way the next event in Williams' match race program is the Cassis Cup in the south of France. "In terms of match racing there are few options over the winter because we can't afford to go to far flung places. Because we do few events we have to look quite carefully before we do them to pick good events and ones which won't be too expensive. We've only done four per year, but now I'm quite keen to pick it up to do a few more events and try and break into the top 20. Once you can get into the top 20 , the invites to the grade one events became a bit easier to come by."

William's hurdles at present - as always - are time and money.