Freddie Carr: 20 years trying to win the America’s Cup

David ‘Freddie’ Carr has spent two decades trying to win the America’s Cup for Britain, he tells Helen Fretter how the game’s changed

“For 23 years I have had the privilege to call myself an America’s Cup sailor, but today is the last day of that for me. The body says it’s time to stop. I am done,” wrote David Carr – or Freddie, as everyone knows him – on 19 October this year.

The day INEOS Britannia bowed out of the 37th America’s Cup as Emirates Team New Zealand took victory marked the end of the third consecutive British campaign, and almost 10 years of trying. The British team did vow to continue on, but a recent high profile split has called into question the future of the the future of the British challenge.

Carr did not come from the Olympic pathway, as many Cup sailors do, but from crewing in dinghies he moved to match racing, and began a livelong love affair with the America’s Cup. “I was a reasonable Laser sailor, but never going to set the world on fire,” he recalls. “When I was 15, I started sailing with Mark Campbell-James in First Class 8s, doing the match racing circuit around Europe. I just loved the teamwork aspect.

“From there, we won the Youth Match Racing Nationals. That year, in 2000, the Youth Match Racing Worlds were in Auckland. We won, and our coach was Bill Edgerton. A week later, he was umpiring in the America’s Cup. So we went out in the umpire RIB with him, and watched the Louis Vuitton final between America One and Prada, which just blew my mind. I remember they went downwind, overlapped the whole way, and [Paul] Cayard was screaming at his trimmer, trying to gybe to break and re-establish overlaps. I was only 17 at the time, and I just thought, ‘This is the coolest thing ever.’”

Nipper’s induction

Following the 2000 Cup, Sir Peter Harrison launched his GBR Challenge, with Ian Walker as team boss. “I called him up and said, ‘Look, I just want to come and help. I’ve got a year off, I don’t want to get paid.’ I went there as the absolute nipper, the lowest of the low. I had the worst jobs you could imagine,” he recalls, including painstaking hours peeling stickers from sails inherited from other teams.

“But eventually, I got on the RIB, then I got on the boat. That summer, it was the America’s Cup Jubilee. We raced Prada and Team New Zealand, and that was me hooked.

“Then we travelled down to Auckland for 2003. I was learning from the very best British yachtsmen, guys who were probably on the forefront of professional sailing.

“I was getting NZ$500 a month, which at the time was about £180. I was working seven days a week, 14 hours a day, but I just didn’t care. When people ask ‘What set you up to be where you are today?’ That was it. Those two years working with Simon Fry, James Stagg, Ian Walker, Ado Stead… all of them. I’m so grateful to that generation for teaching me so well.”

Freddie’s apprenticeship wasn’t only in sailing. As the youngest and, by his own admission, one of the most annoying members of the team, he also got a thorough induction into British sporting culture.

“I’ve always had a bit of a sharp wit on me. But I definitely over-stepped the mark and wound up the old guys. If I was particularly cheeky, they’d put me in a spinnaker bag and hoist me up into the roof and then hit me with inflatable battens like I was a pinata.

“Every time I was walking down the dock at the end of the day, I would get pushed in the water. I was the team whipping boy, but there is a really fun Mickey-taking culture in all sports teams. I’ve always said to the new lads [in INEOS Britannia], it’s when I’m not taking the p*ss out of you is when you’re in trouble. When British people are taking the Mickey out of you, you’re loved and liked.”

Band back together

The GBR Challenge disbanded, scattering into the 11 other teams in Valencia in 2007 – Carr to the Swedish Victory Challenge. The net result: key GBR players were learning from other team’s approaches and banking valuable information. Ainslie was part of Team New Zealand, gaining insight into that squad – and them into him – both referred back to during the 2024 Cup.

Briefly, it looked as if the British Olympic sailing powerhouse, combined with improved Cup experience, could combine to make a seriously competitive challenge.

“On the back of the ‘07 Cup was when Sir Keith Mills started Team Origin, for the 33rd America’s Cup.

“I genuinely think that was the best team I ever sailed with,” says Carr. “We took core talent out of Alinghi and Team New Zealand.

“We had a sailing squad of 20 guys, six of which were America’s Cup Hall of Famers. We had this incredible afterguard with Ben [Ainslie] driving, Iain [Percy] doing tactics, and Bart [Andrew Simpson] doing strategy.

“When Team Origin folded, because it was clear that we were going to go to a Deed of Gift match, I actually had a little cry because I knew that group would disband and not sail together again. So whenever I look back at my America’s Cup career, that’s the one that got away.”

Multihull experiment

With the prospect of another British Cup bid faltering, Carr was among the diverse group of sailors who jumped into the Extreme Sailing Series. Carr recalls the stadium-style racing in multihulls seemed like an enjoyable distraction at the time.

“I’d never sailed a catamaran, but it sounded great fun. I joined it as a break away from traditional keel boat sailing. Then, six years later, it turned into what the America’s Cup was.

“Luckily, I teamed up with Chris Draper on Oman Sail, and we went on to win the series in ‘09. A year later, all the Cup teams joined, and we were right in the thick of it.”

With the Cup hurtling into its multihull era, good Extreme 40 crews found themselves in demand. “At the beginning of 2011, Prada announced they were going to [challenge for] the 34th America’s Cup. Myself and Chris joined Prada on the back of our Extreme Sailing Series win, to go and sail their World Series catamarans in 2012-13.

“We ended up – amazingly – winning the America’s Cup World Series, which was my first taste of winning stuff in the Cup. And then we went on to sail the big catamarans in San Fran.”

But Cup sailing suffered a huge loss in San Francisco, with the death of Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson when the Artemis Racing catamaran capsized and broke up in an accident while training in 2013. For many, the Cup lost some of its allure after the tragedy.

“Bart was [central] throughout my career so far,” recalls Carr. “He was the guy that said to me, ‘Look, you’re good, but you’re not going to be an Olympic sailor. You should look at match racing because I think you could be an amazing crew and team player.’

“His death was a huge pivotal moment in safety around sailing. Sadly, it took that accident for us to wake up and see that we were miles behind in terms of safety protocols because the boats were just getting fast for the first time.

“Whenever Ben and I have a beer we often reminisce about Bart, still. The day we won the Louis Vuitton final, afterwards a few of us were telling Bart stories. That’s how he sits with us all on the big days.”

Flying the flag

After Oracle Team USA’s astonishing comeback win in San Francisco, with Ainslie calling tactics, the door reopened for a British bid for the 35th Cup. “I had a conversation with Ben where he said, ‘Look, Freds, there’s a chance that we could get a British Challenger off the ground here.’ But I’d re-signed to go with Luna Rossa, I’d be giving up a guaranteed thing.

“I ummed and ahhed about it for a while. Something [my wife] Bianca said stuck with me was ‘How would you feel if there was a British challenge, and they went on to win it?’ That was it. I spent the next year in a tiny office in Whiteley Business Park.

“We had a sailing team of six that sailed this small test boat, T1, out of a tent in Southampton. Ben and Jo Grindley spent the best part of 2014 stomping the pavements of London, trying to drum up sponsorship, which they did unbelievably well. And by the end of 2015, we were fully funded in our big base in Portsmouth.”

For Carr, the beginning of the 35th Cup also signalled the beginning of a brutal physical training regime, a workload he maintained for 10 years. It began with shedding 10kg in six months to join the BAR squad.

He went on to compete in two Cup cycles as a grinder, endlessly spinning a pedestal winch to produce hydraulic power, before pivoting to become a cyclor. It required a total shift from the old-school ‘big boat’ mentality.

“In the last 15 years I’ve been on a total fitness and health journey, and I really value what it’s done to my mental and physical well-being. I’ve loved setting myself targets outside sailing that give me a bit of motivation to go the extra mile.

“We get fitness tested every quarter within the Cup world, so that’s my job. But I decided to make fitness my hobby as well, to run ultra-duathlons and marathons. I rowed at the British Indoor Rowing Championship. I did bike races as soon as the Cup went into cycling.

“The way I’ve always looked at it is how lucky am I to be getting paid to be fit and healthy?”

“But my God, it’s hard,” he admits. “In the last two years, I was so glad we moved away from grinding into a hydraulic pump, because my shoulders and my wrists would not stop clicking. My shoulders had given up the ghost after 20 years.”

With the 37th Cup came a shift to hours instead on a bike, but Carr was also working hard to hold back the years. He pledged to team boss Ainslie that he’d hit the team’s fitness benchmark on his 40th birthday. “I gave myself four months to get that number. I trained like a pro cyclist, and I was a misery to live with! But I got the number.

“It’s certainly been harder training for this cycle than the previous ones. When I was with BAR, I could do hard session after hard session. I was the fittest lad back then, and I would really enjoy beating the others. Now I’m at the other end of the scale where I was just so happy to be hanging onto these lads’ coats tails for this last cycle. I’ve had to really adjust my psyche. I’ve gone from trying to be an alpha male, to just trying to beat myself every day.”

The training regime was just the start. In the heat of battle – literally – the cyclors had one of the toughest physical challenges in sailing. “The environment that we’re operating in is not pleasant,” Carr says with some understatement.

Racing over the sweltering Barcelona summer, the cyclors deliberately lowered their core body temperature by wearing ice vests, drinking frozen slushies and dousing their skin with alcoholic sprays. “You want to get onto the boat shivering,” explained Carr. Their core temperature would rise by 4 degrees to over 40°C over the course of a race.

“We’re loaded into a little carbon box with no airflow and have to maintain clarity of thought to help get this boat around the course, while getting shaken around.”

To make it even harder, each grinder is operating in near isolation. “Even in the first version of the AC75s, we were in a trench with human contact. I could look down my line of grinders and get a head nod, or I could see where Ben was turning the wheel. You can take all of these visual clues, and that human interaction where you can build energy. In Version 2 of the 75s, we’re each in our individual pods. And that’s been hard for me.

“But actually the skill in being a cyclor is knowing when not to max out. It’s about recognising that you’ve just tacked off on the right-hand boundary, and you’re on a right shift. So you’re going to be on that daggerboard for 90 seconds. You trim back down, settle the boat. You’ve then got 45 seconds where we can return to baseline and suck up some oxygen. And that’s the skill. In recognising when not to be at max heart rate, so when you arrive at the windward mark, you can really put some watts down. That’s one of the biggest things we had to teach the rowers, because they’ve drilled their whole lives to go and rail it!”

Carr was one of two squads of cyclors which the INEOS Britannia team rotated, including switching out their custom-fit ‘bike’ seats and frames between races. The last race he took part in was on 16 October, the day Britain took two America’s Cup race wins against Emirates Team New Zealand. It was a moment he says 17 year-old teenage Carr in Auckland would never have believed.

“Of this campaign, I’m honestly just so proud. From the end of the prelims to the end of the LV final, the collective effort that close to 150 people had to put in every day to get faster, I’m just so proud of that.

“And it was harder than I ever thought it would be. I still don’t think I’ve quite got my head around the effort that was required to get us to the Match.”

In the immediate future, Carr will be swapping clip-in cycling shoes for more conventional sailing boots. “I’m going to go actual sailing – TP sailing, Mini Maxi sailing. I’m not going to go cycling on a boat at 55 knots!

“But I’m still going to stay involved in the Cup. What that looks like, I don’t quite know yet. I would love to stay involved with the British Challenge and help bring on the next generation of sailors into this world because I think I’ve got a pretty unique set of skills that can help that.

“There’s absolutely no way I can walk away from this thing that has been my life for 20 years.”

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