The recent seemingly catastrophic breakdown in relations between Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Ben Ainslie has left British sailing fans dumbfounded. There has been no concrete new information since a shock press release from Ratcliffe – the sole funder of the British campaigns for the 36th and 37th America’s Cup under the banner INEOS Britannia – that the company would be challenging for AC38 without Ainslie.
If the news itself came as a massive surprise, what was even more surprising was the complete absence of any acknowledgement of Ainslie’s massive contribution to the syndicate over the past two America’s Cup cycles. Disputes and fallouts are not uncommon in professional sport but in the vast majority of cases an etiquette is observed that requires the outgoing party to be politely thanked for their efforts and wished the best for their future endeavours.
Not so in this case, though, as Ratcliffe made no mention of the five-time Olympic medallist and the most successful sailor of all time, choosing instead to express his pride for the team’s development of ‘a British boat that was truly competitive for the first time in decades’, before moving quickly on to claim that he had ‘100 scientists and engineers working on the design of our AC38 yacht’.
Whatever it was that Ainslie did to irk the billionaire petrochemicals tycoon so badly that he wanted no more to do with him remains a private matter. But the tone of Ratcliffe’s statement is plain and simple bad form – and it reflects badly on him personally, his company, and his AC38 campaign.
