Educating Rita
The inside story of how Team UK taught their America’s Cup yacht, Rita, to go faster
It was the phone call Sir Ben Ainslie hoped he would never have to make. Britain’s most decorated sailor had put together a massive campaign for the 2021 America’s Cup in Auckland, recruiting an all-star cast, on and off the water.
He had secured the biggest single sponsorship deal in sailing history, bankrolled by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of Ineos Group and Britain’s richest man.
But on the eve of racing in the final warm-up regatta in December, Ainslie had to call Ratcliffe and admit his team was way off the pace.
“It was really tough for Ben,” said long-time teammate and Ineos Team UK racing rules adviser Matt Cornwell. “Ben and Grant [Simmer] had to call Jim and say, ‘hey, this is honestly where we are. There is a good chance that, let alone winning a single race this weekend, we might not feature in any of them. We are really struggling with our reliability and performance.’”
This campaign was meant to be gold. Lessons had been learnt from Bermuda in 2017 and Ainslie had enlisted plenty of experience, such as chief executive Simmer, who had won the Cup with Alinghi and Oracle.
The Mercedes Formula One team contributed manpower and technical expertise and there were big names across the roster. But the boat — named Rita — was seriously slow.
They had barely engaged in practice racing — plagued by gear failure and other issues — before the America’s Cup World Series last month, sparking a horrible sense of dj vu.
“During the last Cup [in Bermuda], it became apparent as we got closer to the racing that we weren’t as competitive as we wanted to be,” said Cornwell. “It’s always hard doing a first-time campaign and we had changed a lot of things since then. Everyone was much happier.
“So to again have that realisation, ‘My God, I think we’re really struggling here’, was terrible. The mood was really down.”
Ainslie chose his words carefully at the pre-regatta press conference on December 16.
“It’s clear for everyone to see we are struggling a bit,” he said.
Ainslie deflected the negative press (some had called for Ineos to go home) and remained upbeat.
“If anyone can sort out those issues, it’s our team,” said the fourtime Olympic champion.
They almost missed the start of their opening race due to a mechanical issue and the contest was over on the second leg, as they crashed off their foils attempting a gybe.
They looked edgy rounding each mark — like an elephant on roller skates — and finished five minutes behind American Magic.
The second race was worse; there was a breakdown after the first mark and they sat listlessly in the middle of the course, while Luna Rossa finished the race alone.
As Ainslie headed back to base after the post-race press conference, he knew something had to be done.
The Americans next door were in
It would have been easy to throw the towel in and a lot of organisations probably would have . . . it was that dire.
Sir Ben Ainslie
high spirits, after two wins, including a victory over Team New Zealand, while despondency circled the British base. Ainslie called a team meeting, making sure a few boxes of beer were carried out from the kitchen.
“We got everyone down on the shop floor, where the boat is and where all the maintenance takes place, and we had a beer,” Ainslie told the Weekend Herald.
“We said . . . ‘you know, guys, we’re in a hole here. We knew we had some problems here, and that has highlighted just how bad they are. But the only way we’re going to get out of this hole is if we come together and help each other out of it. That’s the only route, the only option we’ve got, and we owe it to ourselves to give it everything.’”
Ainslie names all his boats Rita. It’s a tradition that goes back three decades to when Ainslie’s mother visited the Church of St Rita during a youth regatta in Tenerife, Spain. There, she bought a keepsake for her young son.
It turns out St Rita is the patron saint of the impossible.
And if making Rita sail faster seemed impossible, tactician Giles Scott knew Ainslie would find a solution.
Scott was a rival of Ainslie before the 2012 London Olympics and the two have been teammates for a long time since.
“He was extremely realistic with where we were at,” Scott said. “We had to see it as a siege mentality, we had to come together, focus on where the issues were and do whatever we could to solve them.”
Grinder Neil Hunter, who was the youngest competitor in Bermuda in 2017, remembers the moment vividly.
“He got the whole team together after that first day, which was super tough,” said Hunter. “He said, ‘we are where we are now, and we have to crack on’. We knew from that point, it was going to be a super tough Christmas regatta for us.”
Fellow grinder Richard Mason is in his first America’s Cup but had spent time with Ainslie on the SailGP circuit.
“Ben is pretty good at stuff like that,” said Mason. “When he needs to get the team together, he will. He told us, ‘keep working on your areas, don’t let your heads go down. We know the boat has potential and we need to keep every single area improving all the way.’”
That morning had been typical for Ainslie. He was at the team base by 7am, cycling in from his Ponsonby accommodation.
The 43-year-old hoped for the best but knew the first taste of racing could expose the team’s issues. It did — cruelly — but he was determined to put on a brave face.
“It was about getting everyone together,” said Ainslie. “At times like that, everyone can be a bit shocked. You need to pull everyone together and say, ‘we can work through this and this is the approach we have to take’.
“We knew we weren’t in great shape, but that day brought it home just how dire the situation was. At that point, you can’t just say nothing; you need to do something to get everyone together and decide as a group how you’re going to work through it.”
Ratcliffe was extremely supportive.
“Jim is involved in other sports and understands them, especially technical sports,” said Cornwell. “He sent an email to [Ainslie and Simmer] and they read it out to us. It was very positive: ‘I get where you are, let’s not worry about it, let’s look how to fix it and move forward.’”
Things improved slightly the following day — they led Team New Zealand for a couple of legs — but the final day of the World Series was savage; Britannia II trailed Luna Rossa by 5.5km in the first race, before a five-minute deficit against American Magic.
“It was tough,” said Ainslie. “In sport, you don’t want to be in those positions. You want to be in the faster boat — and we weren’t.
“But I could see how hard the whole team were working to try and solve that and I took motivation from that, because they had put their heart and soul into it for three or four years.”
“It was a huge disappointment,” said Scott. “We don’t want to go out there and get thrashed but the key was coming together and taking steps to get back in the fight.”
Ateam insider describes Ainslie as relentless. He is encouraging and quick to offer praise but there is also an expectation to keep up.
“He’s very focused,” Cornwell said. “You’re not there for fun. When you’re on the water, there is that drive, and he expects that from the people around him.”
Team UK had just 25 days between the end of the Christmas racing and the start of the Prada Cup.
“A lot had to be done,” said Scott. “From an outsider’s perspective, it might look simple — you can identify a problem and you’re saying, ‘they just need to fix that’. But the complexity of these boats is next level and issues take time to solve.”
Most of the team had only two days off: Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
“The base was never empty, round the clock,” said Cornwell. “People were going home to sleep and probably not very long. They were having three meals a day — we’ve got showers, washing machines at the base. They would be living [there], going home to get some sleep and then back again.”
Some solutions were unearthed quickly, others took more time.
“Some things were obvious and there were automatic jumps in performances,” said Ainslie. “About half of it was that. The rest was much more subtle; it wasn’t that easy. We were trying different set-ups, we were trying different components on the boats, be they foils or sails or whatever, and it wasn’t that obvious what was working. We’re still figuring it out. That development is not going to stop until the last day.”
But it’s been an incredible turnaround. From being rank outsiders, they are unbeaten through the first half of the round robin series and are now the Prada Cup favourites.
“There is no denying it was a tough period,” said Hunter. “It was a reality check for us, though. If it hadn’t happened, we might have been able to kid ourselves that we had the performance we needed, had we scraped through in the Christmas races, and thought we weren’t as bad as we were.”
“I’m really proud of everyone for sticking with it,” said Ainslie. “It would have been easy to throw the towel in and a lot of organisations probably would have . . . it was that dire. But they have stuck to it and got some reward for it, which is great.”