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This was published 9 years ago
Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards takes zero-tolerance approach on and off the water
Ask Mark Richards the secret to keeping a champion crew's record seemingly as impeccable off the water as it is on – a feat top teams in many other sports can struggle to do - and the Wild Oats XI skipper has no trouble providing an answer.
While teams in the NRL, AFL, and rugby union to cricket and Olympic sports make headlines for their performances in competition, it is not uncommon for them to attract media attention for all the wrong reasons when thing go awry off the field.
Richards said while preparing for this year's 628 nautical miles Bluewater Classic that starts on Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day: "Picking the right guys in the first place" helps to avoid the latter outcome. "[In] football, they are young guys in their late teens to late 20s. They are quite young. From our guys, the youngest is 28 and the oldest is 88."
Not that Richards, who hopes to steer the super maxi to a record eighth line honours victory this year, pretends that his crew is immune from flaws. "There is a bit of looseness now and then," Richards, 47, says. "We pretty well have zero tolerance. We have had experience in that and that's why those guys are not there any more. You have to deal with it properly, or it will bite you in the backside."
And in the tightness of a squad of 25 sailors from which Richards says 19 will sail with him on Wild Oats XI in the race, he adds: "Not much gets past us."
While Wild Oats XI's owners – the father and son pairing of Bob and Sandy Oatley – regularly look at ways to modify the 100 foot boat for extra speed, Richards believes having little change in the crew over the boat's 10 years galvanises a mindset that will not allow for any potential ruptures. This year, however, Wild Oats XI has a new navigator - Spaniard Juan Vila, who was in the victorious Alinghi crew in the 2007 America's Cup.
"If we changed 5 per cent of the crew from year to year I would be surprised," Richards says. "It's a very solid team. We stick together and everyone knows the boat."
Age and time together on the water, Richards says, also ensures the quality of ocean-sailing experience on Wild Oats XI remains at an optimum for the race. "The young guys today just don't have the experience that we all have," he says. "You look at the team and there are generations of America's Cup sailors in it. We have all done a lot of big boat sailing, which doesn't happen a hell of a lot today … not to the level we were doing in those days. It's hard to find the young guys with the skills. But saying that … we are training guys up ... We have young Sam Newton on. So we do work on that side of it."
With 225 Hobarts between them in this year's Wild Oats XI crew – and most of them professional sailors – it is hard for anyone to crack into the selection. "A lot of the guys are full-time professional sailors so they do a lot of sailing," Richards says.
"A lot of them are sailing every week. Whether you like it or not, it contributes to keeping them sharp. So it is still a good thing."
Richards, who starts planning for a Sydney to Hobart "the week after a Hobart", has no specific check-list of "must have" criteria to assess a potential recruit. "It's in the gut. It tells me every time," Richards says, adding that while "the gut" has "never" been wrong, "I haven't listened to it a few times and it's proved me wrong".
Not that he would elaborate on the when and hows. "It's not worth the grief," he says. However, contrary to what many may think, when Richards is considering a new crewmate it is "Not the strength in people you look at. It is their weaknesses. You just have to make sure with the guys on board that you are not creating a weak link in the team. The weak end in these things can end up being devastating. It's the old story. If it ain't broke don't fix it, so that's why we stick with the same team."
With Wild Oats XI's success from its nine starts in the Sydney to Hobart since 2005 – from seven line-honour wins to two on handicap (or corrected time) and two race records – there is clearly little allowance for error when it comes to racing. Richards demands a lot from his crew, but understand that mistakes occur.
"Human error is an element you always have to deal with, but that's part of life," he says. "You have to understand why the mistakes are made. But at the end of the day, any good crewman is going to put his hand up and say, 'I messed up …' just to make sure we can go through the scenario and ensure it doesn't happen again."
Losing a race stings, Richards says, as was clear by the disappointment on his crew's faces when Anthony Bell's former maxi Investec Loyal beat them for line honours in 2011. Richards remembers the tears of some of his crew, but says he has "never" cried after a defeat and pledges that "it will never happen".
"You have to be a good loser as much as a good winner … as simple as that," he says. "We did the best we could in [2011]. Sure, it was upsetting, but it was what it was."
But Richards says he has long learned to quickly switch from the disappointment of a sporting loss. "I have had to deal with a lot of crazy stuff in my life," Richards says. "A lot of death … and a lot of stuff I have had to deal with. It's never been a problem. I move on from it the next day. Unfortunately that's the way life is. The older you get, the more sense all these cliche lines make. There is no point crying over spilt milk."