Earlier this year, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos decided to pull their sponsorship of British Olympic legend Sir Ben Ainslie and his America’s Cup sailing team. While the official reason was that the partnership had run its course, Britain’s richest man could well have made the argument that he had seriously choppy waters to navigate elsewhere.
Here, the vessel in question is not a yacht but a super tanker and, as the petrochemical billionaire’s first 12 months at Manchester United have shown, it is flirting dangerously with the rocks.
What follows is a tale of lessons learned and of rapid and often brutal cultural change at Britain’s biggest sporting institution.