Chilled-out champ thirsting for gold

Blair Tuke arrives for lunch on a skateboard. He is wearing shorts and a T-shirt and the tan of an endless summer.

One half of the most dominant 49er crew on the planet, he has been back in the country for less than seven hours yet here he is, as fresh as a southerly, skating to lunch through the midday throngs of downtown Auckland. I wonder how he does it.

Blair Tuke usually goes with Peter Burling, or Burling with Tuke depending on which way you’re looking at the boat. The boat in this case is the 49er, a two-person, winged skiff that can reach speeds of up to 26 knots downwind and which has been the on-water home to these two sailors for the past six years. For the past three, since claiming silver at the London Olympics, they have won 23 consecutive regattas.

The home has changed over the years, or at least its name has. They had Brutus, Son, Chardonnay, Lucy and Thunderball, and now they have Thanks Mate. Thanks Mate is a funny name for a boat, I say. He says that was just what they found themselves saying at the time so the name kind of picked itself. I hand him a beer. “Thanks mate,” he says, and the defence rests.

We eat Japanese. He gnaws on edamame and dumplings and looks completely at ease seated among the suits picking at their over-priced bento. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Wind-powered people are used to going with the flow. One diner recognises him and congratulates him on the latest accomplishment. No prizes for guessing his response.

Burling and Tuke were named World Sailors of the Year two weeks ago but couldn’t make it to the ceremony. Instead, they were deep into their preparations for the San Isidro regatta. As it was, he says, they didn’t sail their best. I ask, interested in how an off day looks through a sailor’s eyes, why that was.

“A lot of it is in the boat set up,” he tells me, referring to the small adjustments he makes to the skiff and rig ahead of every race. “Other times you just haven’t quite got a grip on conditions, or conditions change and you don’t adapt quickly enough.

“That’s the thing about this sport — all the boats are pretty much the same, but the conditions never are.”

The real trick of sailing, he tells me, is learning from every experience on the water. Whether that is sailing for Team New Zealand in the AC45 or in the boat with Burling, or racing offshore, or thinking of that first Christmas in his first P-class (which still sits under the family home) when learning to sail in the Bay of Islands.

“You are always banking tiny pieces of information for use some time down the track. That’s the beauty of the sport.”

And it’s a sport that in many ways suits his personality — for as long as he’s been sailing, he says, he’s had an intuition for how to make a boat go faster — a kind of kid of the north meets ocean man gut feel that allows him to instantly recognise the how, what and when. He is only just coming to terms with the why.

“I knew what had to be done when trimming or setting up the boat or adjusting foils, but I am now getting my head around the actual mathematics and physics that govern the processes. It’s a bit of a headache, actually,” he adds, with a laugh.

And then there is another why. Why are Burling and Tuke so focused on the Rio Olympics? Why so obsessed with winning everything?

“We loved winning a silver medal in London but when we saw Jo and Polly [Aleh and Powrie, 470 gold medallists] win their regatta and raise the flag and sing the anthem we knew that’s what we wanted.”

And then he drains his beer and picks up his skateboard. The most chilled-out world champion is heading back to work. “Thanks mate,” he says, and then off he goes, back to the ocean and the training and the million tiny adjustments. Back to the Olympic quest, knowing why and knowing how.