None other than Britain’s most successful Olympic sailor, Ben Ainslie, can be seen on the pontoons of the Real Club Náutico in Palma these days. The triple Olympic gold and silver medallist, Honorary Doctor of Sport by the Southampton University and ISAF World Sailor of the Year 2008, is in fact helmingof recently rebuilt Mini Maxi Alfa Romeo, racig in the IRC fleet on the 28th Copa del Rey Audi Mapfre. This is the first time that the Finn (Athens 2004) and Laser (Sydney 2000) Olympic champion participates in the Majorcan regatta. The new challenge consists in tuning a new boat and a working with a new crew in order to race as fast as possible in order to achieve the best results in the race.


Question: New regatta, new boat. How do you feel about all this?

Answer: “It's my first time here in Palma for the Copa del Rey, a great venue, really nice atmosphere, I think we are going to have a great week. I'm sailing on Neville Crichton's Mini Maxi Alfa Romeo, which was a new boat last year, but got rebuilt, it has some new issues and has been re-launched; so yes, a new team and a new boat. Neville is a great guy to sail with, and we are looking forward to a good week. Hopefully we can improve the boat as we go along and get a good result at the end.

Q: What do you think about the Mini Maxi circuit, exciting enough?

A: The Mini Maxi class has really been taking off in the last eighteen months, here we've certainly seen a good turn out, and I think Bellamente and Alegre are the boats to beat so far this season. Those really would be the guys we will try to mark ourselves against, and we' have already seen some great racing, it's going to be a good week. Then we move from here to the Maxi Worlds in Sardinia, so it's really a good circuit, it's kicking off.

Q: How about sailing with kiwis?

A: Sailing with a lot of kiwis is always tough (laugh), but apart from that, no, it's a good team, I think, you know, coming from a single handed background you realize that's really the key, to big boat sailing. The first is having a quick boat, well designed, good package and development program, and then having a really good team to sail with, where everybody gets on well and works well together; and I think we've got that.

Q: How important are preparation and good communication in building a good team?

A: I think preparation is always key and you are right, communication is everything, whether it's in the start, or the mark roundings, or just tuning the boat properly so that it's going quickly. It's about getting on with the people you are working with, having a good game plan, sticking to it and working well together. We need to improve on that throughout this week, because we have not yet sailed together, but from what I have seen it's a good team.

Q: What do you think of Palma as a venue?

A: I have only sailed here, in Palma, in spring, with the Olympic classes regatta, but never in summer; however I believe it's generally a good sea breeze from two shores, but still a quite a tricky venue. That's going to make the racing close and there's going to be lots of chances for changes to the leaderboard; there will be lead changes along both sides of the course which makes for a great race-course.

Q: Why not saling with the Super Maxi Alfa Romeo?

A: Neville's other boat Super Maxi Alfa Romeo is 99 feet that's one of the quickest boats around, we actually just did the Transpac Racing and broke the record by over a day, and that with a big boat, really a cool one to sail. We've loved sailing that, but it's not so nice for racing around a buoy in an event like this, so we've got the Mini Maxi, and it's such a nice emerging class, we are looking forward to some really tight racing.

Q: Which is going to be your biggest challenge here?

A: Ours is a new boat, so the biggest challenge for us is, for sure, improving; the increase performance for us, which will probably be about 20% over the week, so it depends on how quickly we find that, whether day one, or two, or three, or the end of the week, who knows. We still have a lot of steps to make in that process, and that'll be a challenge for us but looking forward to it.

Q: What about the course, are you enjoying it?

A: The venue course is fantastic, it's one of the best sailing venues anywhere in the world, and it's also an annual and very popular event for the locals. It's also fantastic that the royal family do a lot of sailing here. Palma in the Summer, where else would you rather be!