{"id":121719,"date":"2019-06-14T09:06:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T08:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=121719"},"modified":"2023-03-12T22:47:19","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T22:47:19","slug":"alex-thomson-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/features\/alex-thomson-profile-121719","title":{"rendered":"Alex Thomson profile: Understanding the man behind the suit"},"content":"Sportspeople \u2013 and sailors are no exception here \u2013 can be a little\u2026 one-dimensional. That single focus which makes competitive athletes so successful often comes with a very straightforward mentality.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nTracy Edwards is the polar opposite. She is wholly, entertainingly (no doubt sometimes maddeningly) human, in all its contradictions. She has learned to be tough, yet cries \u2018at the drop of a hat\u2019, she can be warm and easy to talk to, but at times has closed ranks entirely. She\u2019s no-nonsense, with a dramatic streak.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nShe went from teen tearaway to national hero to near recluse before she was 30. She skippered a multi-million pound catamaran, and was spectacularly bankrupted.\r\n\r\nEdwards and her Maiden teams achieved incredible things in sailing, and paved the way for others to achieve more. She inspires unwavering loyalty among some of her team, but has also fallen out with more people in the sport than most. She is not a woman whose life has ever followed a linear path and, aged 57, she still isn\u2019t backing away from controversy.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nA life lived to the full<\/b>\r\n\r\nTracy Edwards was born in 1962. Her mother, Patricia, was a remarkable woman in her own right \u2013 a former ballet dancer who had toured the world, she was a go-kart driver in her spare time, a rarity in the 1960s.\r\n\r\nAfter her father died when Tracy was 10, the family moved to Wales and her mother remarried. Badly bullied at secondary school, and subject to an abusive relationship with her volatile stepfather, Edwards became an archetypal teen rebel. Following years of bunking off school, underage drinking, and run-ins with the police, she was eventually expelled aged 15.\r\n\r\nWhat followed next is well known sailing lore. The teenage Edwards ran away to Greece, worked in a bar in a marina, then joined a motoryacht crew as stewardess. Despite suffering crippling seasickness, she discovered a love of the ocean.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119135\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"593\"]\"\" Aboard Maiden in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEdwards moved from motor to sailing yacht, sailing across the Atlantic on her first passage under canvas, learning to navigate on the return crossing. She worked on a yacht chartered for King Hussein of Jordan, who became a lifelong supporter. She bumped into Whitbread Round the World Race crews on her travels and became fascinated by the challenge.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nShe argued her way onto the crew of a 1985 Whitbread entry as cook. And then, famously, put together the first all-female Whitbread campaign with Maiden (sponsored by Royal Jordanian Airlines), coming 2nd in class and winning two legs in the 1989-90 race.\r\n\r\nShe was heralded as a national hero, and hounded by the press. Her private life became tabloid gossip fodder (Edwards has divorced twice), and she disappeared from the public eye for a couple of years, rearing horses on a smallholding in South Wales.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThen she bounced back, put together an all-female team to try and win the Jules Verne trophy with the maxi catamaran Royal & Sun Alliance in 1998, before being dismasted in the Southern Ocean. She had a daughter, and moved into campaign management with Maiden II. The team was skippered by Brian Thompson, Helena Darvelid and Adrienne Cahalan, and set multiple world records.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119143\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"563\"]\"\" 4 Feb 1998: The 92ft catamaran, Royal and SunAlliance sets off on her attempt at the Jules Verne Challenge Photo: Julian Herbert\/Allsport\/Getty Images[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAustralian navigator Cahalan joined the Jules Verne campaign without hesitation. \u201cWhen Tracy got in touch with me I was on a plane in about two days!\u201d she recalls.\r\n\r\n\u201cTracy is a good leader and she doesn\u2019t micromanage.\r\n\r\n\u201cI know she is controversial, but working within her team I\u2019ve always found it really a fabulous opportunity, and she\u2019s always surrounded by a great team of people who enjoy sailing with her. Look at the personalities she\u2019s managed and the great success she\u2019s had, getting the best out of them. That\u2019s what she\u2019s good at.\u201d\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119142\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"610\"]\"\" Tracy Edwards, Sam Davies and Emma Richards at the launching of the Maiden Two Project in 2002. Photo: Jamie McDonald\/Getty Images[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEdwards then organised the first ever round the world race to start from the Middle East, the infamous Oryx Quest. Four giant multihulls took part in 2005 in a glitzy event, thanks to a \u00a338million multi-race sponsorship deal from the state of Qatar.\r\n\r\nBut despite the huge sums promised (the $1million 1st prize was then the biggest ever cash award for a sailing race), legend has it that the golden envelopes handed out at the prizegiving were empty.\r\n\r\nQatar had refused to pay up. Edwards, who had already been in financial trouble following the purchase of Maiden II, was forced into bankruptcy with \u00a38million personal debts. She disappeared from the public eye almost entirely. And now, she\u2019s back.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe yacht Maiden is the reason why Tracy Edwards has invited me into her home \u2013 and current mission command \u2013 after a decade of exile from the sailing community. Immediately after the Whitbread, Maiden was sold \u2013 first to an owner who cherished her, and then, like poor Ginger the hackney carriage horse in Black Beauty<\/i>, she was sold on, falling further and further into ignominy. Eventually the yacht was discovered, rusting and abandoned in the Seychelles, in 2014.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119144\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"599\"]\"\" Maiden was in a very sorry state when shipped back to the UK from the Seychelles, with severe hull corrosion, and needed a complete refurbishment[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEdwards, with typical impetuosity, announced immediately that she would rescue and restore her.\u00a0There was the small question, though, of what to do next. It was Mackenna, Edwards\u2019 now adult daughter, who suggested using the boat as a vehicle to raise funds and awareness for girls\u2019 education.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe ongoing costs of the yacht will be covered by sponsorship, paid-for crew berths, and hospitality. The fundraising element of the project is wholly separate, with all charitable funds raised going to The Maiden Foundation<\/a>, which then partners with small charities working to improve girls\u2019 access to education through focussing on literacy and mentoring.\r\n\r\nThe yacht has begun a two-year world tour, raising funds in different territories as she goes. It is a significant undertaking, and has attracted some seriously big names: Dee Caffari will skipper for a period, as will Wendy Tuck, the winner of the last Clipper Round the World Race.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_OgOGoLcYoc\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nA legacy project<\/b>\r\n\r\nFor Edwards, the Maiden restoration and tour brings together many things she set out to achieve in sailing \u2013 and since \u2013 to do with female empowerment. It is also a rehabilitation of both herself and the vintage yacht.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019d never really seen this as a sailing project,\u201d she tells me. \u201cWhich I know sounds a bit weird because we\u2019re doing a two-year tour sailing around the world. But that\u2019s almost superfluous for me: this is about girls\u2019 education and Maiden\u2019s legacy. And it\u2019s also not letting Qatar be the last thing I ever did, if I\u2019m brutally honest.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe fallout from the Qatar debacle was savage. \u201cI lost everything,\u201d Edwards explains. After the race, she was held in the country for a month. \u201cThey took away my passport. I couldn\u2019t get an exit visa. It was terrifying.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cSo, they didn\u2019t pay us and when I threatened legal action, things got very nasty, very quickly. I got everyone out of the country. Mack was five and she flew out with my cousin. I stayed behind to fight the legal battle and suddenly found out I couldn\u2019t leave. They bugged my phones. I was followed, threatened.\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards had borrowed heavily against the contract, and when the money failed to materialise, bankruptcy was inevitable. The order came through on her 43rd birthday, and she had to sell the family home immediately.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe worse thing for me was putting my mum into a home, which I still find quite hard to talk about because she was living with us and she was disabled, and that\u2019s where she died.\u201d Edwards recalls with emotion. \u201cBut you know what, I had a disabled mother and a five-year-old daughter, so what do women do? They get on with it.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe decided to move to London. \u201cWe literally stuck a pin in the map and it landed on the Duke\u2019s Head in Putney. So, we rented a tiny, little terraced house just down the road.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119133\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"603\"]\"\" The infamous\u00a0Oryx Cup 2005 Photo:\u00a0Barry Pickthall\/ PPL[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAs a first priority Edwards, a single parent, needed to earn money. Since her sporting celebrity days she had been an ambassador for the NSPCC and was invited to visit the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Edwards was fascinated by their work, and when offered a job running a project for them she jumped at the chance.\r\n\r\n\u201cCan you raise \u00a3500,000 to bring 120 teenagers to London for a conference?\u201d she recalls. \u201cI can do that. God, I loved it. I was part of helping to write the 2009 resolution on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. How awesome is that? I would never have done that if all the bad things hadn\u2019t happened.\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards, who had dropped out of secretarial college after just a couple of weeks, now found herself working a desk job. \u201cI don\u2019t take well to bureaucracy,\u201d she admits, \u201cSo that was hard.\u201d\r\n\r\nInspired to learn more, she went to university to study psychology. \u201cI started when I was 47 and graduated when I was 50. My mother was delighted \u2013 finally, she said, you have an education!\u201d\r\n\r\nAfter graduating she worked on an internet safety scheme for children, but was starting to look for her next challenge. \u201cThen, right in the middle of me going: \u2018Oh, God, what am I going to do next?\u2019 I had the email saying, do you know who owns your boat, Maiden?\u201d She mimes thanking the heavens.\r\n
<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119138\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"549\"]\"\" Maiden has been fully restored and is currently on a round-the-world tour raising funds and awareness for girls' education initiatives Photo: Kurt Arrigo[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe approach came wholly out of the blue \u2013 Edwards had cut herself off from yacht racing, not even sailing for pleasure. \u201cI get really seasick anyway,\u201d she points out.\r\n\u201cI often get invited on day sails, but I say no, because for me it\u2019s a day of misery.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd I was angry. I was angry with some people in the sailing world. I was angry that people hadn\u2019t asked for my side of the story before judging me, and I didn\u2019t have the energy to fight at the time. So I had literally walked away.\u201d\r\n\r\nMaiden eventually returned to Hamble on the south coast, where Edwards had originally refitted her before the 1989 Whitbread. It was both the natural place for the yacht to go and slightly uncomfortable for Tracy personally.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cGoing back to Hamble was very strange because I don\u2019t have hugely fond memories. But then [we were] actually welcomed back with open arms into the fold. That was quite special because I didn\u2019t quite know what to expect.\u201d\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119139\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"601\"]\"\" Tracy Edwards at the nav station of 'Maiden' in the 1989-90 Whitbread Race Photo:\u00a0Tanja Visser\/PPL[\/caption]\r\n\r\nFull disclosure<\/b>\r\n\r\nEdwards is also back to her characteristic pull-no-punches style of operating. There are several \u201cOh God, don\u2019t print that\u201d moments as we get drawn into discussing politics.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nShe still sees it as her place to call out sexism in sailing, and says she \u2018cried with joy\u2019 when Wendy Tuck and Nikki Henderson took 1st and 2nd in the last Clipper Race.\r\n\r\nShe was part of a group that objected to a video the Scallywag team made during the last Volvo (featuring puerile jokes about how to treat a male crew\u2019s crotch rash), along with Dawn Riley and Emma Westmacott. The group took advice from Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson on the employment law implications.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe formed a committee. What did they call us? Old has-been hags, that\u2019s what we were called by some of the guys in the Volvo. The rumour was that we were doing it because we were pissed off to be out of sailing and had something to prove.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t care anymore. I so don\u2019t care what people say.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause we love our sport and we want to see it succeed and we want it to be diverse and wonderful. We don\u2019t want it to be male, pale and stale, which is what it is.\u201d\r\n\r\nCahalan, who was onboard with her when Royal & Sun Alliance dismasted, says: \u201cTracy never shies away from responsibility, it\u2019s never anybody else\u2019s fault.\u201d\r\n\r\nEdwards is currently writing the third instalment in her autobiography, and is also the subject of a revelatory new documentary film, Maiden (see below).\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_119137\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"600\"]\"\" Maiden returning triumphant to Southampton in 1990 after two class wins in the Whitbread Round the World Race[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOne comment leaps out from the documentary, when Edwards recalls what her mother said when she mooted the idea of an all-female campaign. \u201cYou could do it if you stuck to it,\u201d Patricia Edwards had told her daughter, \u201cBut you\u2019ve never stuck to anything.\u201d\r\n\r\nMaiden succeeded the first time around because Tracy Edwards had something to prove \u2013 not just that women could race around the world, but that the teen rebel who\u2019d been told she\u2019d never amount to anything could pull off something audacious.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s a definite sense that this new project is about proving the critics wrong once again.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nIt comes with its own risks (the refit proved complex, and teething problems saw the yacht put in a couple of unscheduled stops on her first leg). But Edwards says she is no more risk averse than she used to be.\r\n\r\n\u201cSomeone has to take the risk. This stuff has got to be done and I have always felt very strongly that you have to stand up and be counted. And I have never been afraid of standing up and being counted.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/YAaXRpdWXXo\r\n\r\n\u00a0The Maiden documentary<\/b>\r\n\r\nThe film opens with a painfully young and nervous Edwards introducing herself as the skipper of Maiden, and traces the arc of how the Whitbread campaign came together through the race itself to their final triumphant return to Southampton.\r\n\r\n\u201c[Before filming] the girls called me and said: \u2018Is this truth time, or is this like the first documentary where we just go everything\u2019s wonderful?\u2019\u201d recalls Edwards, \u201cI went no, it\u2019s the truth. So they were like well, you might not like some of the stuff we\u2019re going to say.\r\n\r\n\u201cTime does soften the memories and the documentary reminded me how awful I\u2019d been, how angry I\u2019d been a lot of the time and how difficult I was to deal with, and the girls were very upfront about that. That was quite difficult to watch. But it needed to be on record.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very raw account. There\u2019s no gloss. It\u2019s us telling it like it is and then some amazing old footage.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe documentary is a thoroughly engaging watch. Although before the Whitbread the Maiden crew were at pains to disprove critics who said girls couldn\u2019t form a cohesive crew, there were deep tensions in the team. It culminated with Edwards and watch leader Marie-Claude Kieffer (n\u00e9e Heys) explosively falling out, and Kieffer leaving. Not all the Maiden crew were involved in the documentary.\r\n\r\nDawn Riley joined the Maiden crew knowing \u2018absolutely nothing\u2019 about Edwards. At the time Riley was working as professional sailor and Edwards, who had no background in helming racing yachts, wasn\u2019t remotely on her radar.\r\n\r\n\u201cTo be fair, at that time I don\u2019t think anybody else on the boat had the weather routing skills she had,\u201d\r\nrecalls Riley.\r\n\r\nIn the film journalists also discuss the appallingly sexist things they wrote about the Maiden campaign, and how they were proved wrong as the female crew delivered back to back leg wins.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe Maiden documentary was released across the UK on March 8 - for showing times see\u00a0www.maiden.film<\/b><\/a>\u00a0It has also been well-received at film festivals around the world.\r\n\r\nThis profile feature appeared in the March 2019 issue of Yachting World, which also includes an\u00a0exclusive onboard look at\u00a0the Maiden restoration.<\/i>","excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows Alex Thomson. He\u2019s not only one of the most immediately recognisable IMOCA 60 skippers, but one of the few sailors who have managed to transcend the sport and \u2013 very nearly \u2013 become a household name. He\u2019s done mid-ocean live link-ups with BBC Breakfast news, millions have watched his Keelwalk, Mastwalk and Skywalk videos on social media, he\u2019s hung out with Lewis Hamilton and appeared in glossy magazines like GQ. He\u2019s the one with the monochromatic boats, the slick suits, the crazy stunts. He was the wunderkind who became the youngest ever skipper to win the Clipper Round the World Race in 1999 aged just 25. He has big budget campaigns with a huge marketing profile, he talks a good game, and is not shy of sharing his confidence in his own abilities. He\u2019s had one of the most spectacular and public runs of misfortune; sinking, capsized, hit by a fishing boat, coming down with appendicitis 24 hours before the start of a race. But he\u2019s also twice smashed the 24-hour world sailing speed record. So all that must make Thomson a big talent, a big ego, who pushes his boats too hard and takes too many risks, right? Well, that \u2013 partly \u2013 is his public persona. But personas can only ever be a cartoon sketch of a person. And Alex, with his Milk Tray man suits and James Bond-styled boat, is easily drawn. As a marketing strategy, it\u2019s brilliant. It has made Alex Thomson and his succession of Hugo Boss IMOCA 60s (six at last count) one of the most recognisable, consistent and high profile brands in sports sponsorship. Up to a certain point, it suits him. He is charismatic, super-confident, fiercely competitive, and a little bit flash. But he\u2019s also been dealt some of the harshest lessons in vulnerability and failure a sportsman can face. He has continued a commercial partnership throughout situations that seem, on paper, impossible \u2013 the Hugo Boss sponsorship deal has, he points out, survived three different CEOs and CMOs (chief marketing officers) at the German luxury goods brand. Article continues below… More critically, it has also survived having one boat abandoned and two severely damaged pre-race, and 14 years of campaigning without that elusive big win. \u201cThey\u2019ve been terribly loyal, more so than they needed to be,\u201d he notes. When Thomson finished 3rd in the 2012 Vend\u00e9e Globe, it was the first solo round the world race he\u2019d ever completed, having pulled out of his two previous Vend\u00e9es and abandoned ship in the Velux 5 Oceans. To sustain a career for so long (2020 will be his fifth Vend\u00e9e Globe attempt) proves that Thomson is more than a one-dimensional image. Talking to him about how he has developed over two decades of trying to succeed at one of sport\u2019s toughest challenges reveals complexities, almost contradictions. Last year he was named the 2018\u00a0YJA Yachtsman of the Year. It\u2019s an award voted for by sailing journalists. Given Thomson\u2019s high profile, and inherent …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1571,"featured_media":121716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[288,747,1481],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121719"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121899,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121719\/revisions\/121899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121719"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=121719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}