i am waiting to speak to Ben Ainslie at the Royal Ocean Racing Club, a grand Georgian townhouse next to St James's Park in London. To be honest, I 'm surprised I 've been allowed in I 'm not dressed for a yacht club. It's a relief to see that Britain's most successful sailor is also in jeans. He's being interviewed by television news first. It's not often that TV news bothers much with sailing, but Ainslie's coveted. He's just won the America's Cup, the biggest prize in the sport.
I 'm surrou.
August 2005, Cowes.
A team of young trainee keelboat sailors is captained for one race in the Solent by Ben Ainslie, then 28. He's already a star. The previous year he won a gold medal at the Athens Olympics. Four years before that, in Sydney, he also won gold. And four years before that, in Atlanta, he won silver, when he was only 19. He will go on to win golds at the 2008 and 2012 Games, too, making him the most successful Olympic sailor ever.
This race in the Solent has nothing to do with th.
There are better, and better-documented, examples of Ainslie's ferocious competitiveness, which now and then can appear to border on psychopathic. The way he hunted down a Brazilian sailor, unsportingly some said, to ensure gold in Sydney ; a human-torpedo assault on a press boat he took offence to ; the rage at the Olympics last year ("They 've made me angry and you do n't want to make me angry"), which naturally spurred on the charge to yet another gold.
What strikes me most, though, seeing it in the.
September, 2013, San Francisco Bay.
(This part you probably know by now.) The final of the 34th America's Cup, the competition that started 162 years ago in Cowes and is now the oldest trophy in world sport, looks like it's all over. The holders, software billionaire Larry Ellison's Team Oracle USA, are being outperformed and outsmarted by the challenger, Emirates Team NZ. In a desperate, last ditch attempt to salvage the situation, Ellison does something bold. He sacks his tactician and puts a.
October 2013, Royal Ocean Racing Club.
We 've caught up with ourselves too, the TV news is done, and now we 've got the Fastnet Room to ourselves. Well, apart from his manager, and a lawyer. Anyway, nice one, the America's Cup! How did he do that then? "Well, it's not a case of how did I do it" Oh, here we go he's going to be all modest, and it's going to be all about the team effort, zzz. "No, it's true. It is a team effort. There were 120 guys on the team and 11 of us on the water. It's.
I think the problem is that I 've got demesne Ben Ainslie here polite, charming and saying all the right things. But it's not the same shy, invisible land Ben Ainslie I met eight years ago (he claims to remember that meeting, by the bye ; I do n't believe him). I guess another couple of Olympics, a knighthood and now the America's Cup is n't going to knock anyone's dedication overmuch. He's certainly more relaxed than earlier, better company, chattier.
I ask him about the Jekyll and Hyde thing, tu.
He's spoken before about being bullied at school. "I think it probably toughened me up a little, made me want to prove myself, because when you 're at school and you 're not really great at anything and struggling a little, then, you know".
Is there's anyone particularly from back then he'd like to stick it to? You know, look at you, Colin Tucker (or whoever), stacking shelves at Asda I just won the America's Cup, and I 'm a Sir. But he's not having any of it. "It was n't anything outrageous, i.
Now is the time to act, though, with sailors and designers available after the end of the last one, and the buzz still on the breeze. It worked this time, he says, probably for the first time, as a sporting event and a television spectacle. Close racing, extraordinary high-performance catamarans almost literally flying around at over 50mph, proper athletes working their arses off, a spectacular setting, TV footage (which TV companies are prepared to pay for) and graphics that meant it was actually possible to know what the hell was going on, not to mention that comeback – it all came together into something properly exciting.
A comparison with Formula One isn't unreasonable, he claims, "with the speed of these boats, the performance thing, and the physicality". Like F1, the America's Cup needs to bring costs down. "If that's done properly then hopefully you will retain that level of excitement, getting a few more boats, and have a great circuit on your hands.
Isn't sailing just a sport for toffs, though? I'm looking round, at the Georgian panelling and the yachty portraits. "That's about the history of sailing," says Ainslie, who says he isn't a toff ("Do I look like a toff?"). "We've got a really proud maritime history, and it's beautiful. You wouldn't want to change that. But it's not America's Cup racing. That's the future. I see them as very separate. In the past it's been a sort of billionaires' plaything. Any sport at the highest level is expensive. Winning the Tour de France isn't cheap, and that's a cycling race. It's a misconception that sailing's about gin and tonics on the aft deck. This event, and the Olympics for the past 15 to 20 years, have shown that a lot of grit and determination and hard work go into it. It's not a toff's sport, it's a proper sport."
He gets quite passionate defending his sport, particularly about accusations of over-toffiness, it seems. Not too passionate I hope – we know what happens when he gets angry, and I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that, even on land. Your right of way, Ben – Sir Ben – even if it isn't.
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