Herald sports reporter Michael Burgess backgrounds the Ineos Britannia challenge from Barcelona.
Video / NZ Herald
Sir Ben Ainslie has a complicated relationship with New Zealand.
For the best part of eight years, Ainslie has been working hard alongside his Ineos Britannia team to come up with possible ways to relieve Team New Zealand of the America’s Cup.
In a competition where the defenders literally gets to make the rules, it’s a task far easier said than done. It’s for that reason Ainslie was so drawn to the regatta in the first place.
“It’s so bloody hard,” Ainslie tells the Herald.
“I mean, it really is. I would say this because I’m in the thick of it, but I can’t think of many harder challenges in any walk of life, particularly when you have a defender as strong as the Kiwis. It’s almost impossible to beat them. Almost.
“That’s certainly why I was drawn to it. If you can achieve that, that’s some achievement for the team to be able to reach that summit if you like, because, it’s the technical challenge, it’s the funding challenge, it’s the sporting challenge, the rules are complex, the regulations are complex on and off the water, then you come to a venue like Barcelona and who knows what the weather is going to be like.
“It’s a massive challenge. That’s why we love it.”
In a way, it’s fitting that it is the Kiwi crew Ainslie is trying to earn a chance at beating. To do so, his Ineos Britannia team will have to win the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.
He says growing up, he had two main ambitions in sailing: the Olympics and the America’s Cup, and it was in Auckland in 2003 that Ainslie made his cup debut as part of the OneWorld Challenge representing the Seattle Yacht Club in their bid to dethrone the Kiwis.
Alinghi earned that right by winning the challenger series, and ultimately demolished Team NZ 5-0 in the cup match.
For the following campaign, Ainslie – who by 2005 had won two of his eventual four Olympic gold medals and a silver - had been signed by Team New Zealand, initially as a tactician before stepping off the main boat to helm the team’s B Boat – used as a means of helping the main team practise match racing.
Emirates Team New Zealand helmsmen Ben Ainslie and Dean Barker during the 2007 campaign. Photo / Photosport
It was a role he filled for both the 2003 and ‘07 campaigns, and one that might well have shaped his career in the event.
“I loved my time at Team New Zealand. It pains me to say it, but I really enjoyed working with Grant Dalton,” he grins.
“You know, he’s a bit like he’s a bit like Marmite, really. You either love him or hate him. We had a really good relationship and he looked after me. I guess he saw some potential in me somewhere, so he helped me.”
Helming the B boat was a decision Ainslie made with Dalton, after discussing Ainslie’s long-term goals of wanting to be the helmsman of his own team in the future.
Reflecting on his time with the New Zealand team, he says he learned a lot about the world of the America’s Cup from working alongside the likes of Dean Barker and Ray Davies, not just about how things operate on the water but off it, too.
“That’s helped me massively in being able to forge my own pathway with my own team and build a strong team with the goal ultimately of beating the Kiwis,” he says.
“It’s been a long journey, but certainly my time with Team New Zealand was pretty pivotal for me career-wise.”
For Ainslie, the opportunity to beat the Kiwis was much closer than he might have thought when the 2007 campaign ended.
Leaving Team NZ to helm British entry Team Origin, it was at the expense of Team NZ in 2013 that Ainslie got his chance to hoist the Auld Mug. After Team Origin announced it would not be entering a challenge for 2013 in San Francisco, Ainslie announced his own challenge for the following edition, but it left him as a free agent for the 2013 regatta.
US syndicate Oracle, who won the cup off Alinghi via Deed of Gift match in the much-maligned 2010 edition, brought Ainslie on board as the helmsman of a back-up boat, but put him into the match-day crew as a tactician when Oracle trailed Team NZ 4-0 in the cup match.
The team soon found themselves further back; on the verge of losing the Cup at 8-1, but Ainslie was hailed as a key figure in the US entry as they went on to claim one of the greatest comebacks in sport, winning the match 9-8 to retain the Auld Mug.
“It was bittersweet. I mean, you go through careers and the longer you’re in a career or you’re in an industry, the more you realise it’s a very small world,” Ainslie reflects.
“So perhaps when you’re younger and you think ‘this is where I’m going to be and this is my team’ and how could anything possibly change? Actually, you realise life doesn’t really work like that and someone who you’re a teammate with one day, you may well be racing against the next campaign.
“Then you realise, actually, the trick is to try and build respect amongst your peers and so on. While I was really delighted and it was a huge effort for that Oracle team to turn things around, I certainly also had a moment of thought for the Kiwis and all of that, given how hard I know that the team had tried to win since the victories in ‘95 and 2000.”
Since then, Ainslie has been able to achieve his goal of leading a British Cup challenge - the first of which came in 2017, when Team NZ ultimately ended up winning the cup after eliminating Ainslie’s team in the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals - with the hope of bringing it back home for the first time in the event’s 173-year history – a fact he is constantly reminded of.
Sir Bein Ainslie debriefs with his Ineos Britannia team in Barcelona. Photo / Ian Roman, America's Cup
“Like you Kiwis are, we’re quite proud about our sporting prowess and certainly as a maritime nation, with a strong maritime history, it is a bit of a blot on our on our copybook that this is the one international sporting trophy we’ve never won,” he says.
“We’ve done really well in offshore sailing, Olympic sailing, but America’s Cup still haven’t got there, so that’s the goal.”
This year’s campaign in Barcelona will be Ainslie’s third at the helm of a British challenge, but it is something of a full-circle situation.
With Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia being the Challenger of Record, he worked alongside Dalton and Team NZ in building the protocol for the event.
A big feature of this 37th edition of the America’s Cup is the reintroduction of a youth regatta, but more so the establishment of a women’s America’s Cup for the first time.
In addition, Ainslie has been actively working to help guide the next generation of young sailors through – recently offering a young British sailor named Kai Hockley the opportunity to join his Athena Group, which covers SailGP and America’s Cup teams, for 12 months to help him develop his skills.
He says it was an easy decision to agree with Team NZ on the need to add both youth and women’s regattas to the event in Barcelona.
“We’re really proud to be a part of that really progressive protocol; the first-ever Women’s America’s Cup and not a moment too soon,” Ainslie said.
“Our Athena pathway programme, we’re really excited to see how they’ve progressed over the last couple of years led by Hannah Mills, Olympic supremo, and Chris Draper, so there’s a lot of talent in that team really bringing through both the youth and the women, and also broadening out into the grassroots.
“That pathway is there and it’s proven to be working and long may it continue and build and grow. It’s fantastic for the sport.”
