By JILL MALCOLM
Seated on the just-unwrapped lounge chair of the type that will eventually fill the space of this echoing entertainment hall and bar of the Swiss Alinghi base on Halsey St, I am waiting for Alinghi's back-up helmsman, Jochen Schuemann. He is still in the day's briefing meeting.
It's 6.30 in the evening. Twelve hours ago Schuemann's day began in the on-site gym with a one-and-a-half-hour workout.
With the rest of the crew he had breakfast on the base at 8 o'clock, prepared the boats for launch at 8.30 and, by 11am, was at the helm of SUI64 out on the Hauraki Gulf. Drills, speed tests, manoeuvres and racing alongside Alinghi's other boat (SUI75), skippered by Russell Coutts, had occupied the rest of the day.
At 4.30 both boats returned to base where they were taken from the water and packed back in their sheds before the crew sat down to the briefing at 6pm.
At 46, and the oldest member of the Alinghi team, I thought Schuemann might be a wee bit water-weary by the time we got to talk.
Five minutes later he lopes in looking as fresh as an edelweiss; a tall slim man in jeans and a grey sweater embroidered with the red Alinghi logo. One would expect, at least, a bit of facial puckering as a hallmark of such a long sailing life, but Schuemann's strong Teutonic features are merely chipped a little around the edges.
Jochen Schuemann was born in East Berlin. When the wall went up in 1961, he was seven, but far from containing him the barrier in one way determined the course of his life.
"Being in East Germany gave me an opportunity that I may not have got elsewhere, even though the facilities were not perfect and materials often in short supply," he says, in heavily accented English (his second language is Russian). "As a boy I wasn't interested in sailing, but I liked the technical side of boats - how boats were put together. I suppose that is why when I was 12 and had a chance to help one of my school teachers build an Optimist, I jumped at the chance."
The Optimist was eventually launched at a small yacht club connected with the school and of course he wanted to have a sail in it. The more he sailed the more he liked it, although he wasn't necessarily a natural. "I remember one day, for instance, when it was very windy," he says, "and I had tears in my eyes because water came in the boat and I thought it was going sink."
Nonetheless, later that year Schuemann qualified for the German championships in the Optimist class. "I was not a big shot but I think I was a quick learner," he says. By now the sails were set. The young Schuemann invested more and more of his time in sailing and began to excel. In those days in East Germany scouts were constantly scanning for young sporting talent.
"Coaches from the Performance Centre for the Olympic Series became aware of this kid who was doing okay," says Schuemann, "and I was taken in hand and given some very systematic coaching, eventually joining a special 'sports school' where lessons were juggled around a rigorous schedule of sailing training."
In 1972 he went to his first Olympics (held in Munich) as part of a youth camp where he had the chance to see what went on behind the scenes and meet performing athletes. "They were the most important games ever," he says, grinning at the thought. "Because I could see everything - much more than when I became a participant, I was 18 years old and that experience gave birth to my Olympic aspirations.
Two years later, in 1974, Schuemann won the Finn dinghy class Junior European Championship. In 1975 he won it again. One year later in Montreal he became an Olympic gold medallist in the same class. He was just 22.
Since then he has won two more Olympic gold medals in the Soling class and a silver at the Sydney 2000 games; he holds three world titles in match racing and a dozen European titles. The edge that brought him these accolades came, he says, from his strict focus on tactical rather than "gambling" sailing.
"I minimise risks. Everyone comes to the Olympics with similar talents and skills but you also have to be strong the mental side - have the discipline to stay focused and not get over-heated. If you just concentrate on going for gold you start to make mistakes. I've seen that happen often. In sailing you are playing with nature and you have to work with whatever it throws at you that day. Patience is important."
Schuemann now shares his knowledge of tactical sailing with Team Alinghi.
"Sailing in the America's Cup was never a boyhood dream of mine," he says. "I'd never even heard of it until 1983 when John Bertrand [whom he'd beaten to win his first gold medal] won the cup for Australia.
After Schuemann left college with a physical education teaching degree, he became a scientific and technical adviser to the East German Sailing Association and then to Elvstroem Sails in Denmark. Then in 1993 Daimler Benz contacted him for their AreoSail project aiming for a German challenge for the America's Cup, a bid which folded four years later.
So, when the offer was made to take the job of helmsman and sports director for the 2000 America's Cup challenge with the Fast 2000 team from Switzerland, he seized the opportunity. "I knew it was going to be difficult," he says "And it was."
Fast 2000 was only in Auckland for three months before the team withdrew in the third round robin when it finished prematurely after their boat was dismasted and they had no money for a new rig.
"Team Alinghi is completely different from the last Swiss attempt. Of course we have more time and money this time but more important is having the right people and the right spirit. The members of the Alinghi team come from 15 different countries and yet one of our strengths is good communication. The largest group is Swiss with Kiwis forming the second largest.
"First of all, we think of ourselves as the Alinghi team and we want to build that brand. But we are also the Swiss challenge and we intend to do well for that country. We are well recognised there now. The America's Cup is getting good media coverage in Switzerland and that's never happened before."
From where Schuemann and I are seated overlooking the Viaduct Basin, I can see the lights at the team New Zealand base still burning brightly. I wonder aloud how the Alinghi New Zealanders feel about withdrawing their skills from those of their fellow countrymen.
"Oh, I'm not at all surprised that some team New Zealand people are with us," says Schuemann. "People talk about the money and of course there is always the money, but more powerful for them was a new challenge - starting with a blank page and building something up, doing things a little differently. Russell [Coutts], for instance, was with Team New Zealand for many years and twice he helped his country win the America's Cup - 5-0 each time. To do it again with the same team is not nearly as big a challenge as starting out, like we have, almost from scratch. That's a huge challenge.
"And it's good for the whole sailing world that a bit of the competence of Team New Zealand has been spread around. It lifts the level for everybody and as a result the event this time will be much tougher and more thrilling than it has ever been before.
"Today's Team New Zealand is still very strong. As defenders they are going to be hard to beat. But whatever happens I think that they have done a wonderful job already.
"They won the cup, brought it here so that the regatta was held in the great environment of the Hauraki Gulf and the Viaduct Basin - then won it again. That has done a lot for this country's boatbuilding industry and for the profile of the America's Cup competition."
Being helmsman and skipper of a boat that is 25m long and directing a crew of 15 other sailors is a big puff of wind away from sailing a two-man, 8m Soling, but the basics are the same. "When I have the helm of 64 or 75 [the Swiss boats' sail numbers] in my hands, I am leading the boat. The crew have to work hard to help me steer the boat and I have to understand what is happening and what everybody else is doing. It's a bit like being the conductor of an orchestra," Schuemann says.
He is learning a lot from Coutts, who does not have as much Olympic sailing experience but more IACC (International America's Cup Class) experience. "Russell is really good at the pre-starts," he says, "but I can sometimes beat him on straight sailing."
This is Schuemann's first real professional sailing job in that he is paid a salary for the period of his contract and, although he's not prepared to say exactly how much that is, he is happy with the amount. And he is not just a helmsman. He is also the team's sports director, chosen because of the physical education degree he completed in Germany.
"I have worked a lot with sports teams," he says, "and so part of my role is to assess crew fitness, set up the schedules and direct the sporting and physical activities of the team."
It is obvious that there is little time in Schuemann's life for entertainment at the moment. Sunday is his day of rest. But what does this intrepid man do? He goes biking for the day in Woodhill Forest and of late he has started playing golf.
"I am very 'sportative' and competitive," he says. His family is used to his heavy training schedules and absences from home. His wife, Cordula, used to be a middle-distance runner and understands the need. She will join him, with their 21-year-old son Andreas, next month and spend the duration of the cup in their Parnell apartment. His daughter Ulrike, 24, is studying law in Germany.
One of the best things the East German sports system gave him, Schuemann says, was discipline and focus, not just for when he is sailing but in everything that leads up to it.
"Some training days are a lot of fun. Others can be hard work and are not enjoyable at all. It is all part of the process. The rewards, whatever they turn out to be, are going to come later."
Jochen Schuemann, Alinghi Challenge
(Switzerland)
* Team role: Sporting director
* Crew role: Back-up helmsman
* Nationality: German
* Date of birth: June 8, 1954
* Family: Wife Cordula, with two children Andreas, 21, and Ulrike, 24.
* Cup career: 1999-2000 Fast 2000 (Switzerland), helmsman.
* Olympic medals: three gold, one silver.
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