Friday, September 29, 2000
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ROCK-STAR REWARDS BECKON 'BIG BEN' AINSLIE
SAILORS BEAM WITH PRIDE

Rock-star rewards beckon 'Big Ben' Ainslie

Talk of the town: gold medal winner Ben Ainslie. Photograph: Sven Nackstrand

THE MEDAL that Ben Ainslie won in the Laser dinghy will mean gold in more ways than one to the 23-year-old Englishman. Already his good looks and instinctive "cool" have made him a teenage icon with an audience way beyond the narrow shores of sailing. Think "Ewan McGregor goes yachting".

After his 1996 Olympic gold at Atlanta, the young helmsman found himself the subject of scores of profiles in magazines aimed at young women. His marketability meant that in addition to around £30,000 a year of lottery money as a training grant, Ainslie earned at least double that in sponsorship from groups as diverse as car-makers and fund managers.

Those opportunities will multiply in the next month or two but Ainslie has good advisers to guide him through the commercial shoals. His father Roddy, a successful businessman, was a skipper in the first Whitbread round-the-world race and has an instinct for a nautical deal.

Since Ainslie Sr went to sea 27 years ago, the money to be found in the sport has changed out of all recognition. "We were scratching to find money to keep the boat afloat the whole way round," he recalls. "None of the crew were paid and I certainly didn't earn a penny out of it. It took years to pay back what it cost me."

The Whitbread race is now the Volvo race, though the round-the-world course is the same, and entries are heavily sponsored by major corporations such as Toshiba and Kvaerner. Sailors with the skill and high-media profile necessary to skipper one of these yachts are rare beasts and highly rewarded.

"With the next Volvo race a year away, I'd expect Ben's phone to be ringing with some very big offers," said one insider. "If a sailor like Lawrie Smith, who's older and less well-known, can ask around $500,000 to skipper in the Volvo, you get some idea of what Ben might be worth."

But the biggest money of all is in the America's Cup. Skippers with charisma and talent can almost write their own cheques in this arena where some of the world's biggest egos and largest talents come out to play. Russell Coutts won Olympic gold at almost exactly the same age as Ainslie at Los Angleles in 1984. Since then the New Zealand sailor has won the cup twice for his country, but has now defected to the Swiss challenge backed by billionaire Ernst Bertarelli.

Coutts and his sailing partner Brad Butterworth are reckoned to be collecting around $5m in a three-year package from the Swiss team. In California, Oracle head Larry Ellison is paying similar salaries to lure key crew members to his San Francisco-based cup challenge.

It seems inconceivable that Ainslie will not be lured into a big payday with the Volvo race or the cup. If it is the latter, he has already said he hopes to sail for a British challenge. There are background moves under way but the key movers are still a long way from raising the $50m likely to be necessary for a credible tilt at yachting's Holy Grail. If it doesn't happen then Ainslie could be the latest high-value British export.

Not since 1983, when the cheeky Aussies and their winged keel grabbed the America's Cup from Dennis Conner, has a yacht race been as talked about as Ainslie's final bout.Absorbed spectators dissected the dodgem-car antics as the lanky kid from Lymington out-manoeuvred his deadly rival, Robert Scheidt.

The Brazilian's critical error at the buoy when he suddenly gybed and crashed into Ainslie's oncoming dinghy was no simple misjudgment. Scheidt, 27, didn't become 1996 gold medallist and four-times world champion through mistaking a simple spin that a Sunday club sailor could pull off with ease.

It was the desperate last throw of a man with nothing left to lose. Unable to get past the Briton on the water, Scheidt gambled that he might salvage something amid the claims and counter-claims of the protest room. Juries are notoriously fickle, and no different in sailing than at the Old Bailey.

However, Ainslie's relaxed demeanour as he watched a video replay of the incident after the race showed how quietly confident he was. "There's a bit of contact now and I think he's probably in the wrong," murmured Big Ben, with understated irony as the tape spooled. In the background, one or two team members chuckled. Unless all the jury members came from Sao Paolo it was obvious to anybody with a knowledge of sailing that Ainslie's case was watertight.

Throughout the interviews and the hearings, Scheidt was always "he" or "the Brazilian boat" when Ainslie spoke. Off the water, the two men are friends, have stayed in one another's homes and shared hotel rooms in their younger, impecunious days. On the water there is only a distant reserve, a staring tension. Much of it goes back to a July day four years ago in the final race of the Atlanta Olympics.

With Scheidt in gold-medal position and Ainslie breathing down his neck on silver, the far more experienced Brazilian knew that only the shy, slightly nervous boy next to him could take his title away. Slowly, and with infinite precision, glaring all the time into the younger man's boat, he pushed him towards the start line. With four seconds to go, and no time to turn back, the sharp white bow of Ainslie's Laser was across the line. A jury boat waved the black flag. Disqualification!

Disconsolate, and with the ever-present cap pulled down so low that nobody could see his face, Ainslie sailed back alone to the marina while Scheidt sailed off for the gold.

"What goes around, comes around," he said yesterday, with a grin a mile wide. Scheidt avoided the medal-winner's press conference and stuck to his view that Ainslie had bent, if not broken, the rules.

Close friends say there had not been a day since Atlanta that Ainslie didn't think about that afternoon. Certainly he had never wavered by a millimetre in his determination to win the Laser gold medal at Sydney.

KEITH WHEATLEY
Sunday Times

SAILORS BEAM WITH PRIDE

Breezing to victory: Great Britain's Iain Percey, competing at his first Olympics, on his way to another sailing gold in the single-handed Finnclass. Picture: Mike Hewitt

BRITAIN'S sailors felt the warm breeze of glory as they added two more medals to an already staggering total. Iain Percy's gold in the single-handed Finn class, plus a silver for Ian Walker and Mark Covell in the Star keelboat, rounded off an almost perfect Olympic regatta.

One accolade said it all. When the British team entered the final press conference at the Rushcutter's Bay marina, hundreds of fellow competitors and journalists spontaneously rose and applauded a group which has dominated the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour.

For Percy, sailing at his first Olympics and just 24, it was a moment that allowed him to uncork the anxieties he had been concealing all week. He went into the final day's races with a 20-point cushion over nearest rival Frederik Loof of Sweden. "It looked simple on paper but it certainly didn't feel it," admitted Percy, wreathed in smiles and dripping wet after being thrown off the dock by jubilant teammates. "I was very nervous before the first race."

Those close to the sailor say he did a terrific job from last weekend onwards, hiding from his rivals how stressed he was at leading almost from the first race. Certainly, in media interviews the normally voluble economics graduate was virtually monosyllabic, his face resembling an Easter Island statue.

In the event Percy took gold with a race to spare and was able to stay ashore for the final session while Loof, the Atlanta gold medallist Mateusz Kusznierewicz of Poland and Italy's Luca Devoti battled for the lesser trophies.

Yesterday's first race saw a complete change of tempo from an intelligent young man who brings an uncomplicated aggression to his sailing. The tactics that brought three firsts and six top-five finishes in 10 races had to be shelved in favour of a more Machiavellian approach.

Percy, who is fond of saying that sailing isn't that hard - "you just go flat out upwind and then fast downwind" - entered an intense pre-race briefing with team manager John Derbyshire. The lessons of Ben Ainslie versus Robert Scheidt the previous day were perhaps in their minds.

"The Swede was the only other person who could win, so I had two options. One was to try and win myself, which is always risky. The second was to just sit on top of Loof and make sure he didn't have a good race. I just had to make sure he didn't finish in a high position rather than go out for the lead and maybe see it go wrong on a windshift or someone getting lucky." So from the first pre-start manoeuvres Percy stuck to Loof like glue, spoiling his wind and generally being as obstructive as possible within the rules. "It's not my natural style but I knew what I had to do and about halfway through the race I knew it was going to happen right and I suddenly started to relax." In the end Loof managed 11th, while Percy was 14th - his worst result of the entire regatta.

Only a year ago Percy was still relatively uncertain about his future and status within sailing. As a teenager he had been a talented Laser sailor, slugging it out in the youth squad with Ainslie. However, Percy physically outgrew the smaller boat and turned to the Finn as the only outlet for a man beginning to have the physique of a young Steve Redgrave.

Behind the scenes in the Olympic sailing squad are a team of physiologist, fitness trainer, physiotherapists and specialist weather adviser David Houghton as well as individual coaches for each class of boat. In many cases the lottery funds have paid for a specialist coach to travel to each major regatta with the competitors, a huge breakthrough in terms of rising up the world rankings and gaining self-confidence.

"My coach David Howlett has been the single biggest factor in my improvements over the past 12 months," said Finn gold medallist Percy. "Having him around whilst I'm racing and using his knowledge to do better the next day rather than next month has been so important."

Howlett, never a man to suffer fools or the insufficiently gifted, is equally positive about Percy. "He's got stamina, tactical ability and everything else you need. He can be as good as he wants to. There are no limits," said Howlett, himself a former world-class Finn sailor.

Adequately funded for the first time, superbly managed by a team of coaches and supported by an army of capable volunteers, the whole three-year campaign for Percy and his teammates has been a model for British sport of how to get things right.

In the spring of 1997 the RYA were able to announce that they had £1.7m a year for their elite sailors. Obviously with the Olympic trials still three years away the money had to spread across various competitors and, just as importantly, coaches.

"We have worked hard over the last four years to spend the money effectively and get as many sailors as possible into the medal zone," said RYA Olympic coach Derbyshire. He has been under no illusions that if the cash produced few or little results on the medals table it could dry up quickly.

On a chart in Derbyshire's office is a stark fact: three sailing medals was Britain's best sailing performance prior to 2000. Score less than that and the future goes back to jumble sales and charity balls. In the event Britain's sailors have far surpassed that tally on the bright blue waters of Sydney Harbour.

Where does the money go? Most of it goes to the sailors themselves. For the first time there is cash for a world-class sailor to train and compete year-round at all the top international events without worrying about how to pay his or her way. The basic allowance has been a little over £20,000 a year, with adjustments according to a sailor's personal commitments. On top of that comes all travel and accommodation costs while racing and training overseas.

For a star sailor like Ainslie with personal sponsorship deals from companies like Henri-Lloyd and Audi, it can add up to a fairly handsome living - as long as one doesn't compare it with a young journeyman golfer who is 89th on the European Order of Merit.

However, the funds are closely administered. "Don't get the idea that there's a barrel of cash at RYA HQ and we just nip in for a bagful every few weeks," cautioned Soling keelboat helmsman Andy Beads-worth. "There is a massive amount of paperwork for every penny that you spend, and with a three-man crew and a 28ft boat to be shipped all over the world the amount of paperwork is awesome."

Even with all this support in place and a world championship under his belt, with a year to go Percy was still reluctant to commit himself fully to sailing. With a 2:1 from Bristol University and big money in the City beckoning, he was fond of saying that economics was just as exciting as sailing and more intellectually challenging than charging around in dinghies.

Twelve months at the top of his sport seems to have altered his outlook and he is now determined to make a career in the sport, possibly heading towards the Volvo Race or America's Cup where the challenges of planning and managing a winning campaign are tough enough for most minds.

This has been Britain's most successful British sailing team, with an incredible 50% strike rate. Five of the 10 disciplines will bring home a medal of some colour. Team manager Derbyshire was overwhelmed and optimistic. "I'm obviously delighted for the sailors who have won medals, but just as proud of everyone else as they have all delivered results to their potential and those who haven't medalled here I'm sure will continue their campaigns and achieve their personal goals in 2004," he said.

"As a team our aim was quite simply to provide a world-class organisation and management structure to produce the best prepared team of any Olympic sport and I'll certainly leave Sydney in a few days feeling like we have achieved that."

KEITH WHEATLEY
Sunday Times