ROCK-STAR REWARDS BECKON 'BIG BEN' AINSLIE
Talk of the town: gold medal winner Ben Ainslie. Photograph: Sven Nackstrand
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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 "Euan 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
