For all the teams in the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup, arguably one of the key roles is that of the coaches who provide a vital link between the sailors and the rest of the team with an all-encompassing vision that allows for outright focus to produce the best on-the-water performance. Every team has employed elite-level coaches and for INEOS Britannia, the Challenger of Record, they have the deep-experience of Rob Wilson, now in his third America’s Cup campaign with the British team.
Often un-heralded to the outside, the coaches are absolutely integral to the sailors, analysing performance, advising, eking out gains, talking through tactics and spotting differentials as well as being the ultimate sounding-board for ideation and innovation. It’s a tough role where trust is at the very heart of the relationship and it’s something that Rob has cultivated with Sir Ben Ainslie since their early career sailing Optimists in the National Youth Squads of Jim Saltonstall.
Highly respected in world yachting, Rob very much sees a duel role split between performance and race-craft, saying: “It’s always such a balancing act in the lead up because you can see performance in terms of pure boatspeed always on the water, and it’s a race against time and I think it’s how you balance your time to eke out those extra performance gains versus doing your start practice, your tactics, your comms practice and all that side of it, contesting the course etc. At the moment we are still treading that line, I would say we’re putting a little more time in on the performance side, but we also use the SIM in the background to do a lot of the race skills, so it doesn’t take the whole team’s resources to do that. For sure it’s a balancing act and I’m sure all the teams will be treading that line.”
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