Interview Ainslie’s drive for America’s Cup success keeps him coming back for more
Hsir Ben is still a pivotal figure for Great Britain and is using Michael Jordan’s ‘brutal honesty’ to push his team on
Sir Ben Ainslie will be 44 by the time next year’s America’s Cup reaches its climax in March. Not old by the standards of yesteryear, perhaps, when the Auld Mug was contested by sleek yachts helmed by commodores in white flannels. But this is the 21st century. The boats these days are rocket ships, requiring computers and gadgetry to operate. They fly above the water at up to 50 knots on hydrofoils the size of ironing boards. They are crewed by elite athletes decked out in armour and crash helmets. This is a very modern, very muscular, very explosive sport.
Ask Ainslie whether he is considering hanging up his sailing boots when it is all over next spring, though, and he is firm in his answer. “I would like to do another [four-year] cycle,” replies the fourtimes Olympic dinghy champion.
“Going on past that, I think, would be a push. But I still have the motivation and the drive.”
Ainslie has never been just any old sportsman. Like millions of us, he watched The Last Dance, ESPN’S documentary about the great Michael Jordan-inspired Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s, in lockdown. Unlike millions of us, he could legitimately claim to recognise certain character traits in Jordan; the intensity, the fierce drive to succeed, even the way Jordan confected rivalries or slights to motivate himself and his team.
“It [The Last Dance] was fascinating,” he says, sitting in his office at the Ineos Team UK headquarters in Portsmouth, the Olympic torch he carried in the relay prior to London 2012 on the wall behind him.
“I didn’t know a huge amount about basketball, so it was interesting learning more about the sport and obviously about Jordan himself. I guess it was just the intensity of the guy, right? He was pretty dominant with his team-mates. And they were either part of that or …
“I think it’s that brutal honesty you have to have if you want to succeed. You have to be able to call people out if they’re not living up to expectations. Yeah, I loved it. And some of the rivalries with the other teams and personalities. He would pick on a few people and that would be his motivation to excel.”
Ainslie was not averse to doing that in his Olympic career, whether it was sailing the Brazilian great Robert Scheidt down the fleet at Sydney 2000 or making it his mission to overhaul Danish rival Jonas Hogh-christensen in 2012. (“They’ve made a big mistake,” Ainslie famously growled after being called for an on-water penalty midway through that regatta. “They’ve made me angry and you don’t want to make me angry.”)
Interestingly, Ainslie found himself studying Bulls coach Phil Jackson almost more than Jordan while watching the documentary; noting Jackson’s ability to work alongside Bulls’ unpopular general manager, Jerry Krause, despite their mutual antipathy, or accommodate mavericks such as Dennis Rodman.
“He let him disappear to Vegas, and then he comes back and he’s like, ‘Well, Dennis is Dennis, so we’re going to do this, and Dennis will either join in or he won’t, but we’ve got to make it work’.
“I mean, what amazing management,” he says.
Ainslie is a manager himself now, of course. No longer an Olympic sailor out for personal glory, he is a team principal, in charge of more than 100 staff, as well as helmsman and skipper on Britannia.
It is a full-on role. Watching Ainslie and his crew put Britannia through its paces on the Solent, an hour or two after we finish our interview, is an education in modern America’s Cup racing. It is like the set of a James Bond film; the level of technology involved, the sheer number of people and support crew. From Ben Williams, a former marine who runs the performance side of the sailing team, to Carl Fereday, a former Special Boat Service diver who goes underwater to check on a new rudder after the first hour or so of sailing.
The speeds involved are staggering. On the day we go out there is not enough wind to get Britannia up on its foils consistently so Ineos use a motorboat to help generate the initial speed. Once up, Britannia is easily reaching 28 knots of boat speed off seven or eight knots of breeze, aided by a “bustle” or “blister” on the underside of the hull, which has been found to give aerodynamic and hydrodynamic gains.
Chase boats with engineers, documentary filmmakers, drone pilots, and replacement sailors ready to swap in, follow Britannia’s every move, while somewhere lurking nearby are “spy boats” working for rival teams, beaming images and intelligence back to their paymasters. It is all part of the game.
Ineos are still building the actual race boat they will use next spring, which Ainslie admits will be “very different” from this first iteration.
The new boat will be flown to New Zealand on an Antonov, a huge Russian cargo plane, in September. The team will travel out in dribs and drabs over the next few months, including Ainslie with his wife Georgie and daughter Bellatrix. They will all have to isolate for two weeks on arrival.
Covid-19 has had a huge effect. But Ainslie does not think his team – who are bankrolled by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s billions so have not had to worry about funding or sponsorship – have done too badly out of it. “We are almost better off because it’s forced us to slow down and evaluate what we are doing,” he says. “It’s been a really productive period.”
As for the lack of racing in the build-up, Ainslie believes that only adds to the excitement and intrigue. “You have got all these issues going on in the background,” he says, noting that the investigation into Emirates Team New Zealand’s use of public funding will “undoubtedly” be a distraction for them. “I think it’s going to be a crazy event. The first time we race each other will be the Christmas race on Dec 17. Someone will have a jump and the rest will be scrambling to catch up. I think it will be similar to the cup in 2013 when NZ were really dominant early on and Oracle managed to tune up, develop and catch up.” Ainslie grins. The old competitive fires are burning as brightly as ever. “I think any top sportsman would tell you that the moment you think you’re not competitive … you don’t want to be that person who is slowly tapering off,” he says. “If I do decide to stop, that will be it. A bit like the Finn, you know, physically there was no way I could keep going with that. That time comes. You just have to try to call it right.”
‘It was interesting learning more about Jordan. I guess it was just the guy’s intensity’