Sailing: Walker leads campaign with lightest of touches

It was raining as Ian Walker packed the car before his family, wife Lisa and baby Zoe, set out for a midweek break from the pressures of the America's Cup at a hotel in Tutukaka, about two and a half hours north of here. These were a precious 24 hours. Although there is a week between the end of an extended round-robin one of the Louis Vuitton Cup and the delayed start of round-robin two next Wednesday, a mountain of work, as well as fitness training, on the water training and crew preparation, looms for the man who is skipper of the GBR Challenge.

The GBR campaign in New Zealand is the culmination of over 15 years sailing with each other and against each other for a cohort of sailors that has harvested a chestful of World Championship and Olympic medals for Britain.

Not least Walker himself, who has two Olympic silvers, first at the front of a two-man boat, the 470, with the still-missed Johnny Merricks at the Atlanta Games, and then at the back of a Star with Mark Covell in Sydney.

Now 32, Walker has had to make some major changes to his life of the kind, which many others have had to address when shifting from being just another team member to being team captain. Before he ever took on the job he talked it through with Rod Carr, formerly Britain's chief Olympic coach, now secretary general of the sport's national governing body, the Royal Yachting Association.

"The whole thing is a tightrope," says Walker. "One of the things Rod said to me was 'Ian, you just have to realise that once you are in charge, you are no longer one of the lads'. They have proved to be very wise words, but, I have to say, it's been one of the hardest parts of my role. There is nothing I like more than being one of the guys, whether it's playing football or going to the pub or playing golf. But, ultimately, along with the general manager, David Barnes, I have quite difficult decisions to make which, let's be clear, affect people's futures, their sailing careers and their family's lives.

"So, I guess, as, effectively, people's boss, I have had to become slightly more distant from people than I would have liked." Which does not mean that he occupies some sort of impregnable corporate fortress. Walker is also responsible for the way in which a community, which has grown to about 120, rubs long together, mainly in the same hotel, for months on end on the other side of the world from where they normally live.

"I do feel I have a great responsibility for that side of things. Perhaps 80 per cent. of the people who are in the confines of the camp are there because I asked then to be there. It is very important that they feel valued, because they are valued. It is very much my style to find half an hour a day just to walk round and have casual chats with people. And normally the last thing I'll do at night is actually go on the boat and talk to the shore crew or anyone else working there." Walker acknowledges that he has been helped by not having to go out and seek sponsorship, in effect the sponsor, Peter Harrison, sought him. And he has a management structure working in parallel, which allows him to concentrate more on the sailing side.

Grant Dalton has raced round the world seven times, six of them as skipper, and says that the job is a bit like being the conductor of an orchestra.

"He doesn't have to be able to play all the instruments and at the same time sing along with the band, but he does have to make sure the others can all play the right tune at the right time," he says. "Nor is it necessary to be the best at anything at all, but, as in business, sometimes to be able to pick people who are better than you at certain things but then be able to manage them. I used to try and do everything, but I have changed. I used to feel threatened, that someone was always going to be after my job. I don't feel threatened now." Similarly, but differently, Walker is like many sportsmen, people in the performing arts, or creative jobs in that he can be inclined to beat up on himself. He describes Rod Carr as one of the most important influences in his life alongside his father, a Sevenoaks businessman, but there seems to be an element of the need for approval when he says he has picked up Carr's philosophy of management by consent.

"If somebody is annoyed about something they just walk into my office, or even hotel bedroom, and have a rant. But I wouldn't want to be skipper, or helm the boat, unless everyone wanted me to do that." Walker has grown rapidly into both jobs, but next week he is in the hands of the designers and mechanics. Next week he would sacrifice every management skill in the book for extra speed.