SailJuice Blog

So, in the battle of the Russell Coutts protégés, it’s Jes Gram-Hansen 1, Dean Barker 0.

Everyone knows that Barker grew up in the shadow of Coutts, and became his regular sparring partner at Team New Zealand for the 2000 defence of the Cup. Lesser known is the Danish match racer Gram-Hansen’s involvement with Coutts, but Gram-Hansen has done a lot of World Match Race Tour events as the Kiwi’s tactician.

Gram-Hansen was already a well-established match racer in his own right, but his performance had taken a bit of a downturn until Coutts came along a couple of years ago and invited Gram-Hansen and his Danish team mates to do some Tour events with him. Not only did this provide the Dane with a chance to observe the master at work, but… Read the rest