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Sir Ben Ainslie, a man we don't have to talk much about because he's the best at what he does. However, in an interview with City A.M. revealed that he is now in the process of 'transition'
“I still very much love the sport, love the competition,” he told City A.M.
“Me going from sport into the management side came about by a sort of necessity as much as anything because, particularly with the America’s Cup, it is a very special event. “It’s incredibly difficult to win in so you need continuity; two, three, four campaigns to build up the intellectual property, the design expertise and so on.
“It needs large budgets to finance that and traditionally, you end up with a wealthy backer that comes in and says, ‘Oh, you know, let’s do the cup’. “My approach to it was if I can put the credibility of a sailor, four gold Olympic campaigns and the Cup with the US in 2013, it’s a different approach.
I’m not just someone who’s throwing their hat into the room to do the carpet, I’ve got the experience. “But then if I’m able to attract the right partners to come on board and help finance the team, the idea is that would create a more sustainable team that can be around for a period of time long enough to ultimately win it”.
America's Cup
America’s Cup is his dream, and Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe is of great importance to him and the team. “We had a fairly tumultuous time, I think it’s fair to say. We started off terribly,” he said.
“The design of our new boat really wasn’t where we wanted or needed it to be so we were playing catch-up to a pretty extreme extent. “We managed to turn things around considerably to end up topping the Challenger Series from the first round and then we went into the final of the series against the Italian team [Luna Rossa].
“It was a disappointing end to the campaign, but we certainly resolved ourselves and with Sir Jim Ratcliffe we continue to learn from some of the issues that we’ve picked up from the previous two campaigns. “Our process is to build and lodge our actual America’s Cup race boat, we are really only allowed to build one boat. We’ll build and launch that towards the end of next year”.
