BEFORE Ben Ainslie had even been born, Rodney Pattisson was ruling the waves.

While Ainslie is now rightly recognised as the best sailor in Games history, Pattisson was the British hero that conquered uncharted waters.

For 32 years, the Hamworthy man had the honour of being Britain’s most successful sailing Olympian.

Excelling in the Flying Dutchman class, he struck gold at Mexico 1968 and Munich 1972 before completing his fine CV with Montreal silver.

With such an imperious record, Pattisson is perfectly placed to assess the magnitude of Ainslie’s fourth gold medal triumph.

“He is the most successful Olympic sailor and he is brilliant,” Pattisson told the Daily Echo. “That is all I can say about him.

“The great thing is that he gets results under pressure and it is almost like the more pressure he has, the better he does, which is unusual.”

Another topic on which Pattisson can speak with great authority is how best to follow in the footsteps of Britain’s golden wonders.

While he progressed as a junior before combining a Navy career with Olympic campaigns, the modern path to the top is very different.

Pattisson said: “Youngsters have really got to become involved with some yacht club or other, unless they take up windsurfing or something like that.

“There are youth clubs you can sail in and there is one here in Poole. They could also go to a sailing school at Rockley, learn the basics there and see if it is something they want to do. I can’t recommend any school better than Rockley.

“Ben Ainslie grew up through the youth training scheme with the RYA. I’m sure his parents encouraged him to have a try and I think they bought him an optimist dinghy. He began sailing it down at Falmouth and started winning in the optimist and then became part of the RYA youth training system.

“In my day, that didn’t exist so my introduction to yachting happened as a result of my father, who was a keen sailor and hoped that I might be interested in the same sport. I learned to sail in Swanage . Swanage Sailing Club then adopted a children’s class.

“Parkstone Yacht Club, which is my home club, has a cadet class. If the parents are interested enough, they can join a club with family membership and, invariably, there is some form of youth training programme within the club.

“It will probably involve buying a boat, although it may not initially and they may just crew, realise they enjoy the sport and go from there.”

While Pattisson concedes that some consider the sport to be very expensive, he says there is funding available to those demonstrating rich potential.

He added: “Ben was very young when he won his first gold but there was the laser dinghy around which was relatively cheap.

“When I competed, there wasn’t a basic Olympic dinghy you could sail. There was the Finn and the Flying Dutchman and they were both expensive boats, so you were unlikely to be sailing those at the age of 18.

“It is a very different situation now but, basically, you still have to learn to sail and realise you can win races to be caught by the bug and determined to try to get to the Olympics .

“The important thing is that children are racing people of their own age and not adults.

“Now, once you have proved yourself and are in the RYA scheme, there is a lot of funding available.”