Kiwi Olympians: Aaron McIntosh

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Bruce Kendall remembers the scrawny little kid who used to hang out on his Bucklands Beach doorstep.

It was 1988, and Kendall had just won Olympic gold in Seoul.

Aaron McIntosh was 16 and had bought his first windsurfer with the money earned from two early-morning paper rounds.

He idolised Kendall, the god of boardsailing, and wanted to learn everything about the sport.

But with Kendall overseas much of the time, he left his little sister, Barbara, to deal with the earnest young fan from down the street, the boy they first met when he was a 6-year-old during a sailing holiday in Fiji.

Fortunately Barbara, a future Olympic champion herself, knew a thing or two about boardsailing.

McIntosh learned so much from hanging around the Kendalls' friendly home that 10 years later he was the new almighty of windsurfing.

Now, in 2000, McIntosh has again looked to the hero of his adolescence for a little help.

The Olympics are looming, and the three-time world champion wants to experience the crush of defeat a few times before he begins the battle of the boards on Sydney Harbour.

Last month, McIntosh spent a week on the water with Kendall, who these days is the Olympic coach for Indonesia. McIntosh lost race after race, but his confidence was far from shattered.

"I really got bashed around, but it was all self-inflicted," the 28-year-old says.

In every race he would give his old training partner a decent head-start as an exercise in building mental toughness.

Kendall was impressed by McIntosh's punishing psychological drill.

"Some people don't have that discipline," he says. "They're too consumed by their own ego to put themselves in a difficult position.

"But Aaron is incredibly tenacious. He's always searching for new ideas. He very seldom discounts the craziest ones. I think he's looking good for gold."

There is no questioning McIntosh's absolute determination - partly born from years of travelling the world with no money in his pocket, just a board and sails tied to the roof of an old car.

He has slept in cars all over Europe, and lived under yacht clubs when he has been stony broke.

Before the 1994 world championships in Canada, where McIntosh won his first title from Kendall, the pair pooled their cash to buy the biggest car they could find, for the smallest amount of money.

"We bought this 20-foot monster for $600," McIntosh laughs. "We put deck chairs and tables on it and drove it in the opening parade."

They lived in a motorhome, which cost them all of $10 a night.

"We struggled in those days, but we always found a way," McIntosh says. "We would spend the whole time haggling - we never even dreamed about staying in hotels. But we always had fun - and that's part of why we do it."

It has been fun, and at times scary. Like the time McIntosh was racing in Israel, watching bombs from Lebanon exploding in the water nearby.

"We were ordered off the water and given the choice of going to a pool or a bomb shelter," he says. "We chose the pool."

McIntosh would have felt safer in water. He grew up on it - his family sailed around the South Pacific when he was a tot, and his first dinghy was a P-class.

His father, Kerry, was initially unimpressed when the teenage Aaron decided to join his mates in the new craze, windsurfing.

"Dad had just bought me this $3000 Starling dinghy - but I had gone out and bought my first board," McIntosh grins. He had saved the $1800 from his paper rounds, delivering the Herald six days a week at 5.30 am. Dad, of course, is happy now.

"All my friends would get dropped off at the beach in the morning and we would sail all day," McIntosh says. "At high tide we would sail through the mangroves, two people to a board. It was the best fun."

But then he kicked the others off his board and started getting serious. His first big regatta was the world youth championships on Sydney Harbour.

"I was just a little fella then, only 45 kilos," says McIntosh, today a beefy 69kg.

"I won the first race - but then the wind got up, and that was it. But here I am now, 12 years later, going back to the place where it all started."

McIntosh left school to start a boatbuilding apprenticeship, but halfway through the pull of sailing overseas became too much.

He would return home from his world tours without a cent and go to work the day after the plane landed, to pay the bills. It took him six years to finish the apprenticeship.

These days he is a fulltime athlete and doesn't worry about money so much. His office is on the water - he wears a wetsuit to board meetings.

At the last Olympics in Atlanta, when the boardsailing was staged off Savannah, he finished a frustrating fourth. But he says it would not have mattered had he won silver or bronze because there is only one colour he is interested in.

"I don't go anywhere to come second," he says.

This time he has immersed himself in the waters of Sydney. He began living there at the end of 1998 to learn the nuances of the tricky harbour.

He has to, because his would-be nemesis is a foreign-exchange trader called Lars Kleppich, who has come out of retirement to sail on his hometown waters.

Today, McIntosh has an apartment in Mossman Bay, a swift scooter-ride away from the beach where he launches his board. He sails alongside Barbara Kendall, the clear favourite in the women's fleet to win her second Olympic gold.

You can safely assume that McIntosh, too, is a hot pick. He is the only man in boardsailing history to have won back-to-back world championships (in '97 and '98) as well as three world titles.

"People would say I'm a favourite, but I don't consider myself as one. I know eight other guys who are capable of winning the Olympics."

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