Sailing against the world’s elite match racing sailors during the upcoming Argo Group Gold Cup will bode well for the development of promising skipper Joshua Greenslade.This according to veteran sailor Blythe Walker who has opted not to compete as a skipper this year to help groom the next generation of local match racing sailors.“Josh is a natural who has been limited to small dinghies till now so this will be a big test going up against some of the big shots in the world,” Walker said. “I think he still has a lot to learn about match racing but that comes with experience and this is a great first step for him and I have high hopes for a bright future for his international sailing career.”Walker, who finished third at the 2006 Gold Cup after defeating Switzerland’s Eric Monnin in the best-of-five Petite final, forms part of Greenslade’s crew that also includes Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) Sailing Academy Director Tom Herbert-Evans and High Performance coach Sean Evans.Greenslade and his RBYC Sailing Academy team-mates qualified for the Gold Cup after claiming victory at August’s Bermuda Sailing Association (BSA) Match Racing Nationals.“We have a good team and hopefully together we get around the course quickly and have good results,” added Walker. “It’s a star-studded fleet. A lot of good guys are coming down and it will be interesting.“I’m looking forward to enjoying it and it’s really fun sailing with Tom, Sean and Josh who are really good sailors. We work really well together as a team and we’re looking forward to some great racing.”The local team will warm up for the Gold Cup with a match race with four-time Olympic gold medallist, multiple Finn and Laser world champion and America’s Cup winning sailor Ben Ainslie. The Englishman is also a two-time King Edward VII Trophy winner.“I don’t think I’ve ever raced against Ben,” Walker said. “We always came out on different sides of the ladder in the Gold Cup those couple of times he was here so we’re definitely looking forward to it and hoping we’ll learn a lot.”Ainslie won back to back Gold Cups in 2009 and 2010.Walker, 45, devotes some of his spare time to coach up and coming match racing sailors.“After the Gold Cup last year I told my team next year we need to get more people into the Gold Cup and I’m not driving,” he said. “Early in the summer Tom Herbert-Evans and I were talking about a match racing clinic so we pulled that together and each of my team members were actually helping coach the young guys and we made it under 30. That was the criteria and we got four teams out there in the summer with the goal of teaching them how to sail IODs as well as how to match race.“It was great and the idea was how to get them to enter the match race nationals and compete and for the nationals it was great because we had Adam (Barboza) on one boat, Somers (Kempe) on another and me on another boat and we were all with these young guys driving and it was great and turned out well.“The goal of getting young blood into the sport was accomplished to some degree and we had to move the nationals to earlier in the summer because a lot of them had to go back to college. But it happened that I was sailing with Josh and I really enjoyed that in the clinic and continued on into the Nationals and we won.“I was doing Gold Cup before Josh was born so that is exactly why I need to train some youngsters. It’s a big generation gap between me and him and that’s sad. We really shouldn’t have that.”