He raised hopes with a record-breaking debut when he won the opening time- trial at Lille. I don’t think I could go through this again.”Boardman came to his first professional team with the credentials of an Olympic champion in the 4,000m pursuit and world hour record-breaker in 1993. It was the exit LeMond needed and, after three Tour victories, he took it.Boardman was not a ready-made team leader. He had achieved wonders on a bike but he was not built, mentally or physically, for winning Tours.
“Roger Legeay [the team manager] needed a new icon for his sponsors, and Boardman was it,” Stephen Roche, another Tour winner, observed last week, as Boardman battled with the heat, mountains and his mind to complete the 3,686 kilometre (2,212 mile) race.
With Paris in sight Boardman, 31 next month and a father of four, said: “I may start another Tour, but I just cannot contemplate finishing it. GREG LEMOND was a hard act to follow, and Chris Boardman arrived in the GAN team as the American was winding down his Tour de France career. The boat was short of fire-power in the strategic department, particularly offshore, and especially when compared with the stellar afterguards of the winning Dutch team that included the likes of the Whitbread sailors Dee Smith, Roy Heiner and Erle Williams; ironically, all three Dutch boats were navigated by British nationals or qualified residents.Looking back, it is easy to see why Britain could not win, although much good has come from a solid third place, not least the fact that it could easily have been a lot worse.. The boat was too tippy and the penalty for her carbon construction was not offset by performance. Looking back, they will consider their fourth in class an impressive result.While the skipper, Adrian Stead, the helmsman, Tim Powell, and the crew of Barlo Plastics were the darlings of the British team, winning not only their class but the top boat of regatta honour, on board British Sydney 40 all was never well.Although Nautica Arbitrator started well and Law pulled off some brilliant moves in the opening inshore skirmishes, his relationship with Stephen Bailey was strained after he had been called to task for mistakes in a warm-up regatta the week before the cup.
No one in the British camp seemed keen to deny him that ignominy. Despite Law’s mercurial behaviour – he announced his retirement to BBC cameras in the middle of the regatta, but the cracks were patched over before he announced it again to the same camera crew during the Wolf Rock Race – the reasons for the demise of the British team were much more deeply founded.Lawrie Smith, Ian Walker and the crew of Venture 99 were pushing an IMS 50 around the course with which they were never happy. Arbitrator was last and nearly an hour off the lead of the Sydney 40 class after six hours and never got back into it.”I seem to be taking the rap for all this,” Law said as he stepped ashore. Going into the race, six teams were in contention for the lead and most found themselves in the top spot at one time or another.
Given Britain’s results in the IMS 50 class and the Mumm 36 class, all that was needed from Arbitrator was what should have been a relatively easy fourth.It did not happen. Law managed a weak, sympathetic pat on the back of the helmsman, Graham Bailey, who himself came ashore devastated.Back in Cowes Britain’s two other team boats, the 50-footer Venture 99 and the Mumm 36 Barlo Plastics, had excelled with a second apiece in the championship decider. The crew were silent as they crossed the finishing line after nearly 48 hours of physically tough and mentally taxing racing. Arbitrator topped the Sydney 40 fleet after six of the eight races, but the boat’s fall from grace was as central to the British failure as it was dramatic. In the last three races, including the high-scoring two- day Wolf Rock Race which finished on Friday, Arbitrator finished seventh in class and ninth twice.As dawn broke on Friday and Arbitrator trailed the Sydney 40 fleet arriving in the Solent, Law looked lost and beaten. The Dutch didn’t win it, we gave it away and it was due to the performance of one boat in the last race.”
That one boat was Nautica Arbitrator, Stephen Bailey’s Sydney 40 skippered by Law. “We had always said that this was a group of sailors and three boats that could win the Admiral’s Cup,” Cudmore said dockside “So I’m not standing here making excuses.
Britain last won the Cup 10 years ago and in the intervening four events had never been close. But this was a “no excuse to lose” team and, as the sailors came ashore on Friday drained after one of the most testing regattas in the recent history of the offshore championship, the British team manager, Harold Cudmore, could not hide his sense of failure. YESTERDAY IN Cowes a beleaguered Chris Law was taking the heat for the failure of Britain’s team to recapture the Admiral’s Cup. Far more important, I suggest, is to provide a proper memorial to those human twin towers who helped make Wembley’s reputation as the venue of legends, Sir Alf Ramsey and Bobby Moore..