Ben Ainslie - his dad sailed round the world, Ben prefers to rule it.
Ben Ainslie - his dad sailed round the world, Ben prefers to rule it.
British Olympic legend Ben Ainslie is the man Team New Zealand must get past this week to keep their America's Cup dream alive.
It will be a tough ask, because this 40-year-old is one extraordinarily competitive and skilful sailor.
1) Ainslie is married to Georgie Thompson, a 39-year-old television presenter, mainly of sports. A magazine voted her the 93rd sexiest woman in the world 10 years ago.
She told The Times recently: "It was Ben's vulnerability that drew me to him. He's so charming and self-deprecating off the water, yet aggressive on it, an attractive but bewildering combination."
2) He is the Olympics' greatest sailor, with medals at five consecutive Games - four of them gold. This amazing haul includes a famous, or infamous, example of Ainslie ruthlessness at the 2000 Sydney Games.
He decided the best way to claim the Laser gold was by stopping Brazilian Robert Scheidt from finishing in the top 20 in the final race. Ainslie trapped Scheidt at the back of the fleet and forced his furious opponent into penalty situations, leading to angry verbal exchanges.
3) Takapuna is where it all began ... the business of being the world's best. He won the 1993 Laser Radial world champs at Takapuna - the first of eight world titles.
Second that year was Aucklander Dan Slater and the pair became good mates. Ainslie is a true prodigy, competing in the Optimist world championships in Japan aged 12.
He won his first Finn world title in 2002, after taking up that class of boat less than six months earlier.
4) His competitive urges are legendary. Believing two rivals were teaming against him in the Finn class at the 2012 London Olympics, he said: "They've made a big mistake ... they've made me angry and you don't want to make me angry."
Reporting the incident, a Telegraph writer reckoned Ainslie was "one of the most ruthless and aggressive competitors these Isles have ever produced". He went on to win gold.
5) Father Roddy - father and son are very close - skippered his boat to seventh in the first Whitbread Round the World Race in 1973.
6) If he wasn't a professional sailor, Ainslie would have joined the Navy.
7) Ainslie hails from Macclesfield in Cheshire, whose most famous citizens include great blues man John Mayall and Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division. All Whites defender Tommy Smith was also born there.
8) Olympic coach Sid Howlett told the Telegraph's Tom Cary of a practice incident in rough conditions, where others had capsized, which typified Ainslie's intensity.
"I motor up to him and say 'Right, that's 100 [tacks], Ben, that'll do. Good work'. And he says 'Great, I'll just do another 10'."
Many believe he has an unrivalled gift for reading the wind and using that, baffling opponents and onlookers with tactics that ultimately prove to be winning ones.
9) Ainslie was part of Team New Zealand's 2007 America's Cup campaign, when there was talk he should take over the helm from Dean Barker.
Ainslie used his Times column to declare: "The hard part of this, for me, is when people try to build this up as me trying to take Dean Barker's job, which is clearly not the case.
"The whole team is based around him being the helmsman and the skipper, so for that to change, it would take something remarkable."
In 2013, Ainslie answered an SOS from Oracle and was a major figure, as they engineered perhaps the most famous comeback in international sport against TNZ.
Gun for hire - Ainslie was a big factor in Oracle's 2013 turnaround in San Francisco.
10) Ben Ainslie Racing was launched in 2011 with Russell Coutts/Oracle as partners. BAR without Ben Ainslie would be like a Lassie film that didn't include a dog.
The UK Government put in $NZ13.5m to build BAR's Portsmouth Base.
11) BAR's most experienced America's Cup sailor is Kiwi Jono "Bear" Macbeth, originally from Castor Bay. The former TNZ member - BAR's sailing team manager and a grinder - was part of Oracle's victory in San Francisco.
His hero is the late Sir Peter Blake. Macbeth was working in Ian Ferguson's kayak store, when he met Sir Peter, who then gave him his big break as a grinder.
"All the guys were really helpful and no-one ever said 'go away', so I just kept coming back," said Macbeth, an endurance athlete, who had to put on 20kg for the new job.
