Never give up, never surrender

madforsailing gets up to date with Mike Golding as his newly remasted Open 60 returns home

Having spent much time with Sir Chay Blyth and Group 4 boss Jorgen Philip-Sorenson over the years, Golding is also looking at developing his business. He freely admits that he is modelling Mike Golding Yacht Racing on Mark Turner and Ellen MacArthur's Offshore Challenges company.

"The thing is my role has always been mixed up, because I have always been everything to everyone," he continues. "So my sponsors see me fulfilling or managing all their ambitions and that's what I'm trying to get away from."

He now has Di Gilpin as Commercial Manager, dealing with the sponsor hunting side and has just made a new appointment - someone who comes from the Arrows Formula 1 team to handle PR internally. Their brief will be promotion to the non-yachting press. "So rather than reaching just the yachting press, we're looking to get to the media Ecover want to get to. The idea of bringing someone into the team is that they have a broader media remit and that potentially should extend our profile outside of the yachting sector better and in turn makes us a more professional organisation for sponsors to associate with. Because this job is crucial to the success of these campaigns and it doesn't work unless you have that right."

Looking at the present economic climate and the state of yachting sponsorship he says that the likes of his company and Offshore Challenges are having to up their game to find sponsorship. "I think yachting sponsorship doesn't come very easily any more [did it ever???] and sponsors are now looking for added value and that added value is the creative element that only a specialist media person can offer. Look at HSBC - they said at the launch 'this is not a yachting sponsorship'. Well of course it is, but Graham [Dalton] pitched it in a certain way and therefore sold it. I think the school's programme is a good idea and it's just being creative within the sailing arena and there's nothing wrong with that."

Similarly with Ecover Golding's program is being driven increasingly by green issues. "One thing we've learned about as Ecover as a company, is that their ethic goes way beyond just selling an environmentally friendly washing powder. Everything they do is environmentally and ethically sound.

"The beauty for Ecover, is that you always feel with an 'environmentally friendly' product that you are having to make some compromise on performance. So when you buy Ecover you think 'it won't work as well as Daz', but what Ecover are saying with the yacht is - that's not true. It works and sailing fits that remit really really well." His sponsor, the Belgium-based manufacturer of eco-friendly washing products, recently had a major launch to kick off a new advertising campaign and Mike and his 67ft Challenge yacht sailed through Tower Bridge and popped a spinnaker emblazoned with Ecover's new campaign message.

At present Ecover are sponsoring Golding for November's Route du Rhum, but beyond this nothing is fixed at present. There are a number of options he's investigating and one gets the impression the route he'd like to take is similar to Ellen's with Kingfisher - a big G-class mutlihull and/or a 60ft trimaran. "The signs are really good. We're doing all the right things. I've got a good commercial team round me now," he says of his progress towards his ultimate ambition and I am left thinking, 'where these not the exact same words Tracy Edwards said to me a few weeks ago?'

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