Ian Brown (sailor)
Ian Warwick Brown is an Australian competitive sailor and coach who won an Olympic bronze medal in 1976 in the 470 class. Brown was the youngest ever Australian Olympic sailing medalist until Elise Rechichi won gold in 2008. Brown was selected to represent Australia as a competitor in the 1980 Olympic Games for the Flying Dutchman Class.. He represented Australia as a substitute competitor at the 1984 Olympic Games. He was an Olympic sailing coach at the 1988 Olympic Games for the Star and Flying Dutchman disciplines. Brown was a substitute competitor and coach at the 1992 Olympic Games. He worked with Great Britain, New Zealand, Bermuda, Bahamas and Australian, Star Class Olympic representatives on the 1996 Olympic site just prior to Olympic racing Brown was invited back to take charge of winning medals across all sailing disciplines for Sailing Australia and the National Sporting systems at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
As well as his parents Brown credits Bruce Hewish of Freshwater Sails, Hugh Treharne of Blue Peter Sails, and Patrick Mayes, a notable tax law accountant, as adding defining development abilities to himself and career. The later was a financial benefactor enabling Brown to compete successfully in the Etchells class, often beating many of the best sailboat racers in the world such as Dennis Conner, Colin Beashel, David Curtis, John Bertrand, Iain Murray and Peter Gilmore.
Brown's first title was an Australian Championship win in the Flying Ant Class in 1968 at Perth. He was 5th in interdominion Cherub class in 1969 and a Moth class world junior champion in 1970 before going on to win the World senior Moth Class Championship in 1972/3 at 18 years old. Ian designed, built and raced several "skiff" Moth designs. Ian's win was the first ever "skiff" moth to win a World Championship in the southern hemisphere, contested at Napier, New Zealand. He backed this up with a second place at Stockholm, Sweden in 1974 https://www.sailing.org.au/news/was-first-world-moth-champion/.
Quote:
"Brown had brought over a new”wedge” design – a wide stern, flatter skiff than the Europeans were then using. It led immediately, after these Worlds, to the Europeans adopting the design and adding detachable tube wings with canvas trampolines. This made the boat much lighter. ".
In 1975 he was 2nd in the Australian OK dinghy championships and later 3rd place in the Okinawa, Japan, Moth Worlds before beginning training in the 470 class with [Ian Ruff. Early in 1976, after four months training they won both the Australian title and Olympic 470 selection regattas to secure Ian's first Olympian status. He, with crew and equipment owner Martin Burke, was 5th overall in the 1977 World 505 Class championships, La Rochelle, France. By 1980 he had won selection in the Flying Dutchman discipline for the Olympic Games, after which he began his sailmaking business. He was 4th Overall in the 1982 Flying Dutchman Class World Championships, Geelong, Australia.
Later in the 1980s Ian was asked and spent a sailing season racing the 16ft skiff Buckle Toyota achieving a podium placing in the NSW championships at Yarra Bay. He, with crew John Dorling and Barry Watson, were 2nd in the 1993 Etchells Class World Championship, Brisbane, Australia. He raced many other sailboats to State and National titles wins. His most recent National Title wins are in the Farr 40 as tactician 2005, stepping in to skipper four heats with Martin Burke for Ian McCrossin and his team to win a Dragon Class Prince Philip Cup on Sydney Harbour, and two National titles in the SB20 class. By arrangement Ian bought and crewed the SB20, giving the skipper role to Nathan Outteridge. They won the 2011 Nationals,, King of Docklands and Geelong Week SB20 regattas in the year Nathan won a moth worlds. Nathan then went on to win Olympic 49er Gold and Silver medals in the following Olympiads. Interestingly Ian and Nathan put in a rushed SB20 charter boat effort with Tom Slingsby, who boasted his first attempt at being a forwardhand, during the 2011 SB20 World Championships at Torquay UK. For winning the 2013 Nationals Ian went back to skippering: "The pre-regatta favourite, Brown and his crew of twin brothers Patrick Conway and Alex and Scott Cotton sailed a classy series with few errors. Their final scorecard of 19 points, a whopping 32.5 points from the nearest threat, proved an unclimbable mountain."
Ian began coaching for class association, State and the National Sailing associations in 1974. He began Olympic coaching on request from Colin Beashel for his Olympics and Star Class efforts. Ian best coaching was each of three World 49er Championship wins by Chris Nicholson. In one of these years he also coached the Star Class World & Europeans Championships win by Colin Beashel and David Giles in Slovenia & Helsinki . A personal highlight during this time was finding a wealthy owner/crew for Colin's involvement and win, and Ian Brown's second place at the 1993 World Etchells Championships. Both were using a full set of sails from Ian's own sail loft. They worked collaboratively in training, and warming up just before each world championship race. Ian also coached Michael Blackburn's second place at the 1998 Dubai Laser Worlds. He also worked for Olympic medalist, Americas Cup tactician and Round the World Race winner John Kostecki for a very close 2nd place at 1996 USA Star Class Olympic Games selection regatta. He has coached numerous Olympic classes to international regatta podium placings.
Over the fourteen years of existence, the sails and his design work from Ian Brown's sail loft, One Design & Skiff Sails Pty Ltd, had world title wins in the 505 Class, 420 Class, Moth Class, 14ft Skiff, Flying 15, and Etchell Classes.
In 1997 Ian was selected as the Yachting Australia Head Coach charged to develop and implement an Australian Olympic Sailing development program that would win as many sailing Olympic Medals as possible at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Ian and his administrator reported to an independent board made up from senior sport funding executives from the Australian Olympic Committee Craig Phillips, the Australian Institute of Sport Geoff Strang, the NSW institute of Sport Michael Scott and, Chief executive of Yachting Australia Phillip Jones. At a sailing funding level, the plan submitted by Ian and his administrator achieved the then, by far, biggest ever sailing based "Special Initiatives" Grant from the Australian Olympic Committee which allowed far greater depth of sailing coaching and equipment projects than had ever been conducted. At a home Games all Olympic Sailing disciplines are represented. His program, at that time, produced the best ever Australian medal haul for Sailing at an Olympic Games as well as in the lead up world championship regattas. It included World Championship wins and podium placings in the former most weak of Australian Olympic sailing disciplines. Two of the prior lesser performing disciplines achieved Olympic Gold medals. He was responsible for inviting and achieving both Trisha Leahy Hong Kong's sailboarding Gold Medallist's Sports psychologist and Ukrainian gold medal winning coach Victor Kovalenko onto his team and Victor to move to Australia. Due to the increasing number of female athletes involved in Olympic sailing disciplines Ian spent considerable time discussing coaching with the females involved and with their endorsement asked Dutch born coach Erik Stibbe onto his program. Erik was coach to the Laser discipline and Michael Blackburn's Olympic Bronze medal, as well as the Europe Class and its representative. Ian was also responsible for the first ever National Olympic Sailing Training Base at HMAS Penguin, and the first ever full-time Olympic sailing coaching programs across the Olympic squad. While overseas, he met with numerous country Olympic sailing program managers and formed a Danish Australian cooperative agreement, subsequently signed off between the Danish and Australian Olympic Committees. This shared some of their sailing resources when teams in Europe or in Australia. This agreement brought the potential Australian Sailing Olympians for the first time to practice dormitory living together as at the Olympic Games, and receive sport science appraisals while in Europe. His program was recognized by the Australian Institute of Sport for delivering a sports science program that was the most improved of all Australian Olympic Sports. He was asked and gave a seminar to all Olympic sports head coaches or managers at Canberra on his planning, bottom up approach to quick use of HMAS Penguin Naval Base, and his Australia / Denmark international cooperation. As a result of the success of Ian's program, its athletes' performances and staff, Yachting Australia was awarded a position as one of the exclusive Olympic sports within the Australian Institute of Sport.
Quotes:
Re Strategic Plan.
" Dear Ian, Thank you for sending me the strategic Plan. I am please to see this amount of planning and the thought going into it. It makes it a lot easier to support sailing." John Boultbee, Director of Australian Institute of Sport.
Re: Implementation.
"He also successfully initiated and implemented a unique, cohesive, strategic, and positive evaluation and review system." Trisha Leahy, Senior Psychologist, Australian Institute of Sport. Now CEO the Hong Kong Sports Institute, and with a global profile.
Re: Strategic focus.
"Ian did a remarkable job in keeping the program focused on both long and short term goals in the lead up to the Olympics. Our results in the sport were the best ever at Olympic Level."
Geoff Strang, Director Sport Management Division, Aust Institute of Sport and part of management team over-sighting funding and implementation of Ian's designed Australian Olympic Sailing program.
Re: Athlete opinion.
"Ian always had his door open. Regularly, he reassessed his own place in the sailing team, assisted by confidential reviews with participants. Thereby he successfully measured the quality of his own work and made adjustments to the systems that were in place, where necessary. As a consequence the sailing team developed considerably from 1996 to 2000." Michael Blackburn, 2000 Olympic Games Laser Class Bronze Medalist.
Personally Ian was awarded an International Olympic Committee Certificate of Merit for his efforts and very high level collaborations in regard of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Also as an Olympic 470 Medalist and inviting, problem solving and backing Victor Kovalenko's Australian 470 success Ian was given a life membership of the 470 Class Australian Association.
After more than a decade of medical issues including a problematic spine operation, prostate cancer and two years of frozen shoulder Ian competed in 4 International 505 regattas in Europe and Denmark during July and August 2019. His first dinghy racing regatta after 35 years was at Riva Del Garda with expert German crew Holger Jess. Most memorable moment during this tour was a renewed friendship with world famous Spanish Olympic sailing coach Paul Maes, now famously known as "The Doreste coach", but also a sailing coach to Spanish royalty, and being told that at the 1976 Olympic Games, when Brown achieved Bronze, Paul had coached the Spanish 470 silver medalist Antonio Gorostegui.
Ian has spent considerable time racing with or assisting other younger sailing competitors such as Glenn Bourke ; Malcolm Page ; offered his own crewing and sports boat sailing equipment to Nathan Outteridge ; offered his laser class equipment to Australian Olympic representative Sarah Blank for pre Games use in Europe.
Currently Ian has casual consulting/mentor relationships, for elite sailboat racing skills and life, with a number of young emerging elite sailing athletes trying to cross to senior international sailboat racing success. Latest include several years of support, from Youth level, and now onto the 49er Class Australian Sailing Team. Also supporting 2019 Australian Nacra 15 World Youth champions in their lead up period, plus follow through to a third place at WASZP Inspire SailGp Sydney Harbour event, February 2020.
Ian is an honors qualified shipwright, has a professional directorship diploma with Australian Institute of Company Directors, and Project Management master's degree from the engineering faculty of Sydney University.
Ian has been awarded numerous NSW Govt achievement medals, was the treasurer of the NSW Olympians Club for 9 years, a club captain at Seaforth Moth Sailing Club and a Rear Commodore at Hunters Hill Sailing Club.
He won his Olympic bronze medal in the 470 class at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. The sailing was held at Kingston on Lake Ontario. His forwardhand and equipment owner was Ian Ruff.
Professionally Ian Brown has been or is:
- A boatbuilding apprentice and tradesman,.
- A computer based job costing clerk,.
- Developed a Sailmaking/Design company as owner and managing director..
- Australian and International Olympic sailing coach..
- An Australian Olympic Program Head Coach..
- Currently a Director, Trustee, Corporate Secretary and Investment administrator.
Ian is married with three children and four grandchildren.