Sailing-Ainslie hands Fletcher helm of British SailGP team

LONDON : Ben Ainslie has picked Dylan Fletcher to helm the British team for SailGP's fifth season, which begins in Dubai in just over a week's time, filling the gap left by Giles Scott, who jumped ship to the league's Canadian team.

Fletcher returns to SailGP as 'driver' of the team owned and run by Ainslie, who also chose the 36-year-old as his co-helm for Britain's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to wrest the America's Cup from New Zealand last month.

"This is the team I wanted to be part of. I feel like there's a future here with the F50 team and then the America's Cup ... I really want to work and build the whole thing together," Fletcher said of his new role.

The 49er Olympic gold medal winner in Tokyo, who helmed the British team's high-speed foiling catamaran in SailGP's first season, told Reuters that its expansion to 14 events and 12 teams meant it was going to be a lot tougher.

"I've missed out on three seasons, and the standard is going to be incredibly high," Fletcher said in an interview before flying to Dubai for pre-race training on an F50 simulator.

"I've got a team that's capable of winning, and it's very much about me and my ability to learn and get on with doing a good job," he said, adding that he had gained a lot of knowledge from the America's Cup campaign with Ainslie in Barcelona.

Fletcher said Ainslie's "feel" for the boat was one thing that had stood out about the 47-year-old's helming, adding that it had first felt strange to be competing alongside the sailor who as a teenager he had asked to sign his life-jacket.

"It really is just trusting your intuition, regardless of the boat and how it feels, it's still that same fundamental instinct," he said of his America's Cup lessons.

'INCREDIBLE'

Fletcher