‘Definitely struggled’ – How Olympic gold medallist’s ‘bitter pill’ sparked emotional comeback for £1.4m prize

It was the phone call Dylan Fletcher never saw coming.

The previous evening in 2019, the inaugural Great Britain SailGP driver had enjoyed a dinner with his team and a new sponsor who had just jumped on board.

SailGP

A day later, Fletcher learned he’d been axed and would be replaced by Sir Ben Ainslie, the most successful sailor in Olympic history with four gold medals.

Yep, the same Ainslie who Fletcher got to sign his life jacket when he was little, had now ripped away the gig of a lifetime from the latter.

As the 37-year-old explained to talkSPORT.com, ‘it definitely felt like the rug got pulled from under us.’

“I definitely struggled with it more than I realised at the time,” Fletcher said.

“It felt like quite a big blow. I didn’t see, at the time, a way back. It just felt like a long, long way back.

“It didn’t stop me from trying and I took a few different roads and ventures to get back on the team.”

Granted, Team GB’s first hit-out in SailGP hadn’t exactly gone to plan.

A number of crashes, including one in which they capsized, hindered their chances of mounting a challenge in what was a six-team league for the first season, where only the top two teams would compete in the final.

“But ultimately our goal was always a building block that season,” Fletcher explained.

“We knew we were almost never going to get to the final, so our focus was really on season two and season three. Then it got taken away.”

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‘It’s made me stronger’

Despite being the cause of Fletcher’s heartbreak, Ainslie was one of the first to reach out to the crestfallen Briton in the aftermath.

“I never had any issues with why Ben wanted it,” Fletcher said.

“He was really good about it, I completely understood why he wanted to do it and why the league wanted Ben involved. It’s just one of those unfortunate situations.

“I remember him (Ainslie) saying he’s had that situation when he was a bit younger in the America’s Cup. It’s something you just have to go through. It felt like it’s a made me stronger and I can’t regret anything to be here doing what I’m doing.”

With no openings left among the SailGP fleet, it forced Fletcher to, as he claimed earlier, venture down ‘a few different roads’.

The first of those led to the COVID-affected Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

‘Been such a long time coming’

Going into the Games, all the hype was centred around New Zealand duo Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, who were the defending Olympic champions in the men’s 49er event and are now the marquee names attached to the Black Foils team, who represent the island country, in SailGP.

But Fletcher and Stuart Bithell stunned the Kiwi duo to land Great Britain’s first Olympic gold medal in the category.

Elation and pride were inevitably some of the overriding emotions in the immediate aftermath for Fletcher, but none more so than the ‘enormous’ relief.

“We knew we could do it,” Fletcher said.

“It’d been such a long time coming. With the added aspect of losing the boat in SailGP and what that felt like, it really felt like we’d bounced back.

“We’d proven to everyone what we’re capable of. To beat Pete and Blair, who people were saying were the best sailors in the world and thought were unbeatable, to go and beat them was something we were very proud of.”

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How ‘bitter pill’ re-ignited Fletcher’s burning fire to return

But from the high of making history came the sobering low of returning to SailGP in a role that seemed unfathomable when he was skippering Great Britain in 2019.

Along with coaching other teams, Fletcher settled into a hospitality role with the league.

The new role was, unsurprisingly, ‘a bitter pill to swallow’.

“I felt like I’d proven I had the skills to be out there,” Fletcher said.

“To be in the chase boat and giving tours, it felt really tough. I remember one time I just didn’t want to walk into the tent and deal with the guests of the British team. It felt too hard.”

Yet the experience would prove to be invaluable, especially after Fletcher was tapped on the shoulder to return to SailGP in the role he so desperately wanted back.

SailGP

Ainslie, who is also the CEO of the Great Britain team as well as the INEOS Britannia America’s Cup team, stepped down from his post as driver in January 2024.

Giles Scott was appointed as his replacement but would last only half a season in the role as he got poached by NorthStar, who represent Canada, in what marked the first direct transfer of a driver for a fee between two SailGP rivals.

It meant there was a vacancy behind the wheel of Great Britain once more and Ainslie knew exactly the man for the role, as Fletcher’s return to the team was made official last November.

Under Fletcher’s watch, Great Britain began the 2024/25 campaign in bright fashion with three podiums from the first three events, including a victory in Sydney.

But the following three events saw Fletcher’s side record finishes of fourth, seventh and eighth and resulted in Great Britain falling out of the top three in the overall championship.

Yet the team rebounded in emphatic fashion for their home race in Portsmouth to finish second as Burling’s Black Foils took home the spoils.

SailGP

It was the first time in three years SailGP had taken place on British shores and the pageantry befitted the occasion, as Fletcher’s face was printed on the back of the grandstand in Southsea Common while 20,000 fans turned out to catch the action in a clear marker of the competition’s growing popularity.

But for the sport to explode here in the UK, Fletcher knows the best way to do that is by claiming the winner-takes-all Grand Final, which is contested by the top three teams at the end of the regular season and sees the victor take home a cool $2m (£1.4m).

With four events remaining before the Grand Final, Fletcher’s team sits fourth in the season championship on 50 points – one behind third-placed Spain – and needs no reminding of what’s at stake.

“We’re certainly feeling the pressure in the team,” Fletcher said.

“We’re here to win and that’s why Ben put me in this position at the end of the day.

“We’ve got our work cut out, we can’t take our foot off the gas and we’re taking each event as it comes. We’re trying to make that podium, that final in each race.

“If we do that in every event, then we’ll be where we want to be going into the season finale.”

The first of the final four SailGP regular season events gets underway on Saturday in Sassnitz, Germany.