Ineos vs Athena: What happens when you make Ben Ainslie angry

“They’ve made a big mistake. They’ve made me angry; you don’t want to make me angry.” The words of Ben Ainslie after a controversial race 8 of the Olympic Regatta at London 2012.

The Danish and Dutch competitors in the Finn fleet, the men’s singlehanded dinghy, claimed that Ainslie had touched the leeward mark as he sheeted in to round up on to the next upwind leg. Ainslie was insistent he hadn’t touched the mark. 

But he’d been here before. 

In the second race of Athens 2004 the Briton passed French competitor Guillaume Florent on what appeared to be a straightforward port/starboard cross. Florent protested Ainslie, who gestured back to the Frenchman with an upturned hand which he waved as if to say, ‘Are you having a laugh? There’s night and day between your boat and mine!’

I remember seeing the TV coverage myself and there was indeed ‘night and day’ between the two Finns. Or at least, around half a boat length. No cause for the Frenchman to have to alter course. Florent was taking the piss, but his protest was successful. Despite presenting the TV footage as evidence in support of his cause, Ainslie found himself disqualified from that Athens race and now on the back foot.

So you can see why Ainslie was taking no chances in Weymouth Bay that day. After Jonas Hoegh-Christensen (DEN) and Pieter-Jan Postma (NED) shouted ‘Protest!’, Ainslie took his penalty turn and gave up the lead of the race. Although the Briton did enough to surf past Hoegh-Christensen on the final downwind leg and grab third across the finish line, Ainslie was beyond fuming.

When Ainslie uttered his ‘You don’t want to make me angry’ comment to the press, it didn’t long for the Incredible Hulk memes to surface online. It all added to the mystique of a sailor who has always blown hot and cold. Who, by his own admission, can be a bit ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. There are plenty of sailors who can attest to that, myself included. I remember a rare moment in the Laser when I was close enough on a downwind leg to possibly be affecting his air. The then-teenager, who wasn’t even a somebody at that point in his career, left me in no #*%#*$# doubt what he thought about my positioning on the race course. Tenacious and uncompromising, Ben has always been.

With the exception of a relatively straightforward victory in the Finn class at Beijing 2008, Ben Ainslie had to grind out all his medals the hard way, and not without a fair sprinkling of controversy along the way. I remember the late, great sailing journalist Bob Fisher telling me on the morning of the London 2012 medal race that Ainslie’s Olympic medal history would be ‘palindromic’. That, from five Games from Atlanta ’96 through to London 2012, the Ainslie record would read: Silver-Gold-Gold-Gold-Silver. No way was he going to emerge from his home Games with a gold.

Going into that final race of London, Bob was right. There was no realistic possibility that Ainslie was going to muscle his way past all his rivals to grab the golden gong. Yet somehow, a series of impossibilities happened, a few fluffed lines by his over-excited rivals, and Ainslie did indeed emerge from the ruck of the final congested turning mark to seize the prize. He had earned a fourth gold, and his tally of five medals now put him ahead of Danish sailing legend Paul Elvstrom as the most successful Olympic sailor of all time.

I first met Ben when he was just 15 years old. We were sitting next to each other in a classroom session at Grafham Water Sailing Club near Huntingdon. We were both in the British Sailing Squad, me as a 470 crew and Ben as a teenage prodigy who had been spotted as the next big thing. I seem to remember him being a bit restless, not really seeing the point of studying tactics or boatspeed in a classroom when we could be out on the water working it out for ourselves. He was lightning quick downwind, a raw talent in the boat. But did he have the all-round skills and temperament to make it happen on the big stage?

Whoever saw that early potential in Ben deserves a gold star. Three years after sitting in that Grafham classroom an 18-year-old Ben Ainslie outsailed a stellar line-up at the British Olympic trials in the Laser. He beat future Olympic medallists like Iain Percy and Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson as well as some other big names like Hugh Styles and Mark Littlejohn who both went on to become Olympic medal winning coaches.

A year later at Atlanta 1996 and Ainslie, still just 19 years old, ran arch-rival Robert Scheidt very close for the gold medal before the wily Brazilian sucker-punched the teenager into an early start and a black flag disqualification. Still, the burning disappointment - yes, a disappointment! - of a silver medal set up Ainslie for a glittering Olympic career that spawned four more medals, all of them gold.

While Ainslie has poured every bit of the same tenacity and determination into his America’s Cup campaigns, getting his hands on the Auld Mug has proven a much more distant prospect. With some notable exceptions like Alinghi’s first-time victory at the 2003 Cup in Auckland, no one wins this elusive trophy without learning the hard lessons from a few failed attempts. Look how long Luna Rossa has been going at this thing. Seven campaigns and counting for Patrizio Bertelli and the Italians.

With Ainslie’s Emirates GBR team riding high in the SailGP Championship, you could ask why he still bothers himself with all the trouble and strife of mounting another Cup campaign, especially after such a public fall-out with his last paymaster, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Sir Ben’s got enough going on in his life, bringing up a young family with his wife Georgie, running the SailGP team, and about to run his first London Marathon in less than a month’s time.

Sir Jim’s latest ‘I want my boat back’ intervention seems to be timed to cause maximum distraction and damage to Sir Ben’s new GB1 campaign for the Cup. It’s not like Jim wants his boat back so he can have a go at the Cup himself, after pulling the pin on any Ineos ambitions a year ago. It’s a pity to see these two knights of the realm embroiled in such a pointless, spiteful jousting match. If they had found a way to put aside their differences and keep pushing forwards together, British prospects of a Cup victory in Naples 2027 would be a lot stronger.

Sir Jim’s latest protest is the last thing Sir Ben needs. But then again... we’ve seen what can happen when you make Ben angry.