Sailing: A nation counts on able seaman Walker

As Britain prepares to do battle in the Louis Vuitton Cup, which gets under way here in Auckland on Tuesday, one man sits serenely in the eye of the pre-race storm. Ian Walker, the skipper of GBR Challenge, is amazingly unfazed by the maelstrom of preparation, selection, boat testing and general pit-lane mayhem.

Two years ago Walker, his silver medal from the Star class at the Sydney Olympic Games still dangling around his neck, struck a deal with Peter Harrison to lead the sailing team of his nascent America's Cup challenge. Now, with the countdown measured in hours, Walker is about to take on the best sailors in the world powered by some of the world's biggest spenders. As he puts the final touches to preparations, the 33-year-old bears the weight not only of Harrison's £22m-plus investment and the hopes of the GBR Challenge team, but also the expectations of Britain's sailing and sporting nation.

"I feel remarkably calm," Walker said on Friday. "With two weeks to go you worry that you haven't done enough, but with one week to go I have found myself thinking that we can't do much more. We are at the stage where we are polishing foils rather than reprofiling them, and the crew are starting to rest and get ready for Tuesday. We've been working hard for this and we've set the bar very high. I remember in Sydney going into the Games that I wished that we had more time in the Star, and I have similar emotions here. But I hope that we have set the bar impressively high and I don't want our approach to be governed by fear of failure. I certainly don't feel fazed when I meet any of the other skippers."

It was Walker's performance in Sydney that impressed Harrison enough for the syndicate chairman to offer him the job. While gold-medal winners Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy and Shirley Robertson unquestionably shone the brightest, it was Walker and Mark Covell's silver that quietly impressed; the pair had come to a technical and ferociously competitive class late, mastered the art and had a crack at the gold going into the final race. Those were precisely the attributes – coupled with a maturity beyond his years – that Harrison and his general manager, David Barnes, thought essential to build a successful America's Cup challenge team.

Walker has needed all of those skills – plus those garnered during study for a Cambridge University degree and his subsequent experience in management – to help him propel the GBR Challenge towards their self-proclaimed goal of making the Louis Vuitton Cup semi-finals.

These talents were put to the test when the new boat, Wight Lightning, was first put on the water in July. Initially the team had difficulty getting the better of their tune-up boat, a 2000-vintage Japanese also-ran. "I think we underestimated how much is involved in getting a new boat on the water and up to speed," Walker said last week.

Now, though, he is happy. "We set a high target in performance and it has been hard to get to that target. From the start we have proved that we can sail a good race, but now it will come down to how fast we are. That is the test that we are about to undergo and one to which we haven't yet been exposed."

And if tuning up Wight Lightningand picking a first team had not been enough, there is also the preparation of a second boat – Wight Magic, whichhas been under construction in Cowes in secret for many months. "I have been very careful not to let the second boat disturb our progress," said Walker. "Actually what happened was that its arrival coincided with the firming up of the crew and so we have been able to develop the new boat in tandem and it has been a useful tool for motivating people who weren't initially on the Wight Lightning crew. We have a path towards using Wight Magic, but the boat has got to prove itself. My job is to get the best out of Wight Lightning."

Tomorrow morning Walker will know who the team will face in Tuesday's first race, in which he will helm the boat after Andy Green has steered it through the crucial pre-start jockeying for pole position. If he gets his way GBR will be facing a big name. "I'd like to meet an Oracle or a Prada," he said. "The bookies have us at about sixth or seventh favourites alongside the Swedes, and we've got to try to prove to those people that we are better than that.

"I liken it to the fact that the GBR Challenge is a company and our product is race wins. We've been in business for a couple of years and we don't know how good our product is... but we're about to find out. If we sail to the best of our ability and get knocked out I'll not be unhappy but if we find we have a fast boat and go out because we make mistakes or sail badly, that I will see as failure."