America's Cup- Top Brit signs on with China Team as Coach

by Sail-World on 2 Sep 2011 Top British yachting correspondent, Stuart Alexander, writing in The Independent, reports that the British Olympian and yacht designer Derek Clark signed on with China Team as head coach.

Clark's first task will be to get the Asian team up to speed for the America's Cup World Series which gets underway next Saturday in Plymouth, England.

The best result for China Team, a two-time America's Cup Challenger, was a third in the Speed Trial phase of the first event in Cascais, Portugal.

Clark will be tuning up a crew which has been restructured following the sudden departure of multiple world champion and double Olympic medalist, Mitch Booth (AUS), who skippered for the first event in the ACWS.

Booth has been replaced by 2004 Olympic silver medallist Charlie Ogletree - who was already on the boat - and the crew is joined by Andreas Hagara who will take over the helmsman's role.

Clark (60) has a long sailing career in various guises for British sailing entities. He crewed for Phil Crebbin in the 470 at the 1976 Olympic Games in Kingston, finishing sixth after winning the third race. He was previously a coach for the British Olympic squad. He was a designer on the team that produced the radical multihull, Blue Arrow, when Peter de Savary tried unsuccessfully to join the Mis-Match in 1988. However his design blew up and was destroyed during practice, while litigation was underway to attempt to squeeze the British boat into a Challenger selection Series.

Clark began working with China Team this week.