Interview with Ian Walker, boats.com YJA Yachtsman of the Year

by Mark Jardine on 31 Jan 2016 We spoke with Ian Walker, double Olympic medallist and Volvo Ocean Race winner, after he was awarded the boats.com YJA Yachtsman of the Year by the Yachting Journalists' Association.

Mark Jardine: I'm here with Ian Walker, boats.com YJA Yachtsman of the Year. Congratulations on the award! What are your thoughts upon winning?

Ian Walker: Well the first thought is how proud I am to have my name alongside all the greats of British sailing, and the second thought is that it's a shame my whole team isn't there. Of course, sailing around the world, it's a team sport, it wasn't about Ian Walker it's about the whole team. Everyone played their roles in it. But winning this award is a good fillip for them and the sponsors as well.

MJ: Talking of the Volvo Ocean Race, this was your third attempt, after a couple of campaigns beforehand. What was it like to finally win that event?

IW: Third time lucky! I think in anything you do, you've got to serve your apprenticeship. For me it was a pretty brutal apprenticeship. In the first campaign we basically had no money and we were late... but actually I have really good memories of that campaign; we had a great team and we learnt a lot. We had some quite good results, despite having a boat that was a long way off the pace. The second campaign was brutal! We had the sponsorship, but we had it very late, and didn't have the right design of boat. We had to marry up the great expectation with the lack of performance. So the second race was really brutal, though we had a good sailing team, probably good enough to win the race... but we didn't have the tools. We had to keep believing, and fortunately just did enough to retain the faith of the sponsors. This time round, with the one-design, everybody had the same gear, we had the experience and a really good bunch of people, and we managed to keep the consistency that you need in one-design sailing, which was the secret in the end.

MJ: You mentioned that this is probably the strongest set of nominees for the boats.com YJA Yachtsman of the Year award. What can you say about Giles Scott and his Olympic campaign, and Ian Williams and the World Match Racing Tour feats that he's done so far?

IW: I think in any other year, Giles winning three Gold Cups - not just winning, he obliterated the competition - for sure that would be enough to win the award. Likewise with Ian Williams; I don't think anybody will ever win five match racing crowns again. I feel for those guys; I know what it's like to not win an award when you think you're in with a shout! It's impossible to judge one achievement against another. Giles is going to have his turn next year. Let's hope he wins that Gold medal in Rio. It will be very hard to see beyond him next year. It will be harder for Ian Williams with the change of boats in the World Match Racing Tour, but if anyone can adapt, I'm sure it's him. Hopefully he'll come back having won six!

MJ: It is 21 years since you were last nominated for this award. What are your thoughts on your sailing career since that point back in the 470s? You've gone through a lot, and many things have changed. Where do you think the direction of the sport - with everything moving to catamarans - is going?

IW: Technically I won the award in 2000, because I was part of the British Sailing Team in Sydney that won five medals, but yes, my first nomination was in 1994 with John Merricks, a fresh-faced 24 years old crewing a 470. We won the ISAF Worlds and pretty much everything else that year. I've had a pretty rounded career: racing in two Olympics, coaching the girls in 2004, two America's Cups, three Volvos. It's been a great ride. One of the problems when you go into big boat sailing is these become two or three year campaigns, and you're not always in the biggest-budget campaign. Sometimes you have to take on propositions that are maybe less than ideal. So you can disappear for years on end! You're bashing your head against a brick wall, but that doesn't mean you're not a good sailor, it just means you're buried in trying to beat the odds, trying to compete against people with more money or faster boats or more experience.

You've got to do your apprenticeship as I said. It's pretty easy to disappear for three, five, even ten years. Sometimes you never come back! What's pleasing for me is that I managed to finally prove I can be competitive offshore and that we could win the race.

As for the direction of the sport, it's just fundamentally shifted now. If I was a young dinghy sailor now, I'm not sure whether you'd even bother trying to sail a keelboat. Look at the America's Cup, the Extreme 40 series. Nowadays it's probably more important to go down the gym than get technical knowledge about masts or sails or anything else. It's a very different sport.

Obviously if you want to go round the world you've still got the Volvo Ocean Race so you need to sail big boats. But how do you do that? In the old days the Admiral's Cup was our stepping stone. I remember going to Cowes Week and watching all the Admiral's Cup boats coming in, and looking at the scores, the guys carrying the sails off the boat, and wanting to do that. I remember looking at the likes of Adrain Stead, who was just ahead of me in terms of years. I'd see Ado and think, 'I want to do what he's doing!' Which I did. It's not quite so obvious now how kids can do that.

MJ: Where next for you? What challenges are there left for you to complete in sailing?

IW: Well I don't want to hang up my life-jacket just yet. I think the important thing is in the short term that I do lots of sailing - if you don't sail then you lose your edge. This year I've got lots of keelboat sailing; TP52s, Maxis, some superyacht stuff as well. This is the year where you get the chance to go out and do other sailing, before needing to focus on the next Volvo Ocean Race. Whether I sail or not, I don't know. First of all you've got to be asked, so I'm not worrying about it too much at the moment. I'm hoping Abu Dhabi will do the race again. If they do, which we should hear soon, it's hard to imagine not being involved in some shape or form.

MJ: Ian, massive congratulations on winning this year, and all the best for all your future campaigns.

IW: Thanks very much.

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/187433/Interview-with-Ian-Walker