Ian Walker has the perfect sailing face. Even when he has not just been skippering a path through 5,000 miles of the roughest oceans, when he has emerged fresh from a two-week break, his visage holds an unmistakably gnarled edge.
Maybe, to have a sailing face, is the nautical equivalent of being blessed with a poker face. It can pull similar bluffs. Back in Cape Town, at the end of the first leg, after 25 days of sailing, Walker was red-eyed, spent, unshaven, haggard but buzzing: too much caffeine gum, too much stressing, not enough sleep or food.
Azzam had won the leg, but in edging out Dongfeng Race Team by just 12 minutes, had wrung themselves dry in a dogfight finish. So intense was it, the Volvo Ocean Race chief executive Knut Frostad noted how tired Walker looked. "I could see it on Ian when he arrived," he said in Cape Town. "He looked tired and you realise, wow, it's going to be a tough nine months."
It was fair to wonder then whether Walker, or any sailor and skipper, would last the course, given how close one-design racing was likely to be. Walker, however, brushed off the observation. Sure it was a close leg, but not physically tough. Sure there will be closer legs (there were) but the race has had them before.
In short: bring it.
That whole look is a bluff. At the end of each leg, Walker appeared as if he had been emptied by an unexpected trudge deeper inwards to the edges of his physical and mental frontiers.
In reality, this is how he is most alive. The tension this race specifically heaps upon the sailor, of inseparable and fraught racing, is what drives Walker. It has driven him, almost as obsession, right through the race.
Likely it has propelled him his entire professional career, from the day he was 11 and decided he wanted to be an Olympic sailor.
It is difficult to pierce that sailor face. Usually he has – publicly at least – remained faithful to Kipling’s line, treating triumph and disaster as equals. Every time he has led to a leg win, or a podium finish, his immediate and exclusive concern has moved to ensure another.
True, there have not been many disasters this time, but it cannot have been easy to oversee Azzam’s 2011/12 race and want to come back for more.
He has been a unnerving but also disarming interviewee, frank and humorous at unexpected moments, but never shedding the impression of being perched upon an edge. Last September, before the race began, in a cafe in Abu Dhabi as he pushed an unoccupied chair back to its place, he admitted to being a control freak.
Arguably, it is what has helped him oversee, for almost its entirety, a flawless campaign. It has allowed him to run Azzam, as he said back in September, as the chief executive of a mid-sized company.
Jamie Boag, the commercial director of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, has been Walker’s business partner for a decade and has known him as a friend for longer.
“There are many different styles of skipper and each style is different, not necessarily wrong or right,” Boag said.
“Ian’s skill-set – and only a couple of skippers in the world have it – is that he has a very quick mind and the ability to be across a lot of things. He is not only looking at the boat’s performance but also the budget, personnel, all those aspects.
“He would’ve been successful at whatever he turned his hand to. He has a commercial brain, he understands sponsors and their commitments. There’s many skippers out there who literally put their T-shirt on, turn up, sail the boat and that’s it.”
The key this time has been to place support around him. On the boat, he has had Simon Fisher not only as a navigator, but as a sharer of leadership.
The pair has done much of the decision-making together, often staying awake and overlapping into each other’s watch to discuss strategy. The sage-like Roberto “Chuny” Bermudez has been another pillar of support, quiet and unnoticed but essential to the well-being of Walker and crew.
Off the boat, Neal McDonald, as performance manager, has been critical. He goes back a long way with Walker and sailed with him in the 2008/09 race. Walker brought him into the team, to utilise the mind of one he called the best British sailor of his generation.
McDonald ended up sailing one leg, but it is at the stopovers that he really played his part. “I’m a bit of a confidante for Ian,” he said last year. “If he’s got something he’s not sure about, he’ll come talk to me first and know I won’t have any slant on it. I’m a sounding board to him.”
His biggest contribution was made before the race began, in his meticulous assistance to Walker in putting together the right crew.
It will be to Walker, however, that primary plaudits go, as would have been the brickbats had Azzam not succeeded. Though he seeks consensus, every decision ultimately has been his.
“When I was younger, the one thing I always thought about sailing was that there was no reason why anybody else should be better than me,” Walker said last year.
“I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. What I mean is there’s no reason why I can’t practice and get better than anyone else in the world.”
He was right. There was no reason.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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