Sailing Toward a New Life

Even as a child, Marcello Burricks knew that he couldn’t hope for too many chances. His parents had been forced by the South African apartheid regime into the “Slangkop” township in Cape Town, and had to live there in a tin hut with their four sons. Their daily life was marked by poverty and violence: When Mr. Burricks was eight years old, one of his fellow pupils attacked him with a knife – several scars on his chest still remind him of the incident. At 14, Mr. Burricks was arrested because he had beaten up a teacher. He joined a gang and eked out a living as a gangster. “There was no alternative,” said the 21-year-old. “There was no other way of surviving in the township.”

The only chance for the young South African: He had to get out of the ghetto. And he made it – with the help of a national sporting idol. Decorated sailor Ian Ainslie gave Mr. Burricks a place at the Izivunguvungu MSC Foundation for Youth, which he had founded in 2001 – a school for colored children and adolescents from the townships. He received professional sailing tuition from then on, and crammed navigation and ship construction.

Absolutely unbelievable

Mr. Burricks worked hard – with success. He made the leap to gain a place on Team Shosholoza, the first African crew to try to win the America’s Cup. The team is being supported financially and with high-tech equipment by the main sponsor, T-Systems. Mr. Burrick’s teacher, Ian Ainslie, is acting as the team’s strategist in the competition, which will be held this year off the coast of Valencia. “After joining our school, he was enormously keen from the very beginning,” said Mr. Ainslie about his protégé. “Sometimes we had to chase him off the boat, so that he would do his schoolwork.”

In addition to Marcello Burricks, who is on board as an all-rounder, bowman Golden Mgedeza and the second bowman Solomon Dipeere, two more graduates of the Izivunguvungu school, are also Shosholoza crew members. Mr. Ainslie had already met Mr. Mgedeza and Mr. Dipeere in 1996 – after the Games in Atlanta, he worked as a teacher in a high school in Cape Town. The two youths, just 15 years old back then, had received a grant to attend the school. Mr. Ainslie taught them sailing – it was the beginning of the Izivunguvungu project.

In the meantime, the three sailors have played their part in helping Team Shosholoza to cause an international sensation. Team Shosholoza – which started out as a complete underdog – has now registered its first victories in preliminary regattas for the America’s Cup, and even finished fifth among the 12 competitors at one of the final races off Sicily last October. The team itself is now absolutely amazed, and not just with its successes. “My life has been completely transformed by sailing,” said all-rounder Marcello Burricks. “I still find it all absolutely unbelievable.”

Read the full story in the printed edition.