Safety Foremost for Ainslie

In competitive sport there are wins and losses. For sailing superstar Sir Ben Ainslie, a helmsman for Oracle Team USA, winning is something that he’s very good at, but last month the 36-year-old Brit experienced an unexpected loss: that of close friend Andrew “Bart” Simpson, his lifelong sailing buddy, in a [well publicized] sailing accident on San Francisco Bay in which Simpson’s team Artemis Racing capsized during a regular training session, trapping Simpson under Artemis’s AC72. The experience has been both devastatingly sad and sobering for Ainslie. Here he shares his thoughts on AC34 and the absolute need for a safe competition.

The infamous San Francisco summer breeze is now upon us: How has it been on the water? Do you have any apprehensions about the boat you’ll be racing in these conditions now the Louis Vuitton Cup is just a month away?

BA: We’ve been sailing for the past couple of days, and I’ve been doing more helming, steering the boat downwind–foiling–and it does take a little bit of getting used to. They’re certainly very fast boats, and you have to be absolutely on your game to sail them. I think that in the right conditions the boats are manageable, and if the safety recommendations being put in place for the event are at the right level to sail and race in a safe manner, that’s what we all want.

There have been statements made publicly that you had considered stepping down from the Cup following the Artemis tragedy. How real was that consideration?

BA: I think like many of these comments that it may have got blown out of proportion a little bit, which made it sound little bit more over the top, but it certainly wasn’t my intention. It was, however, something that I’m sure a lot of people felt at the time because we were all so devastated that something like that could happen. If you were very close to Bart, like a lot of us were, actually seeing that something like that could happen does make you evaluate a lot of things. I’m not saying it’s something I had to struggle with for very long, but I do think there are moments like this where you do think about your life, what you’re doing with your life, and what it’s all about.

How has the accident impacted you and the sailing team at Oracle?

BA: Like all the other teams, we’ve looked long and hard at how our boat is prepared, how we sail the boat, the safety equipment, and if something were to go wrong, how to recover the boat. I’m absolutely certain the other teams have done exactly the same thing. It’s the sensible response to a disaster like that. None of the teams ever want anything like this to happen again. You look very long and hard at your processes and your equipment and the conditions that you’re prepared to sail in. Read on