These are exciting times for Iain Percy and Artemis Racing. With competition in the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda starting today, the double Olympic gold medal-winner and his team look the ones to beat. The contrast with the previous edition of the Cup could not be starker.

Four years ago this month, Artemis’s boat capsized on a training run on San Francisco Bay, an accident that killed Andrew “Bart” Simpson, who had stood with Percy on the podium when the pair had won Star Class gold for Great Britain at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Simpson was Percy’s best friend. It was Percy that had talked him into coming to America to join the Artemis crew, and for a while he considered quitting. But he knows that Simpson would not have been surprised by their present good form.

“Bart was always really confident in our ability as a team and he would have always just said, ‘Well, we bloody well should be at the front’,” Percy said. “He would have expected nothing less, even if the rest of us did have our doubts; he was never one for them. He was always confident, always full of energy and very positive. He would have been just telling us to shut up: ‘of course you’re at the front, get on with it’.

“Of course, I think of Bart, but not necessarily when I am on the water. In areas of the campaign where he used to bring a lot of drive, a lot of energy and a lot of smart ideas, which you always need in technical sports, we miss him professionally as well as personally.”

After the tragedy, it was remarkable that Artemis made it to the start time at all in San Francisco, although they were then swept aside by Luna Rossa in the semi-finals, before the Italian team were thrashed by Emirates New Zealand in the final. Yet by competing at all, they were able to honour Simpson’s memory.

“Immediately after the accident, I didn’t think about any of the things I think about today,” Percy said. “I was thinking about him and his family, and just trying to get through it.

“The thing that turned it for me was when I got back to San Francisco having been in the UK and it was very evident to me that there was a team of 100 people there; this was their job, this was their passion and to stop it wouldn’t have been what Bart wanted and wouldn’t have been the right solution.

“For me there was no other way. Bart was a family man, he enjoyed the Cup, he enjoyed the community we were in. But it was the job for his family and that was the case for another 100 people. To go on seemed absolutely the right thing to do and then pretty quickly it turned into honouring him and finishing that Cup with a really respectable performance of doing what was actually really hard — to get out there to sail. Not only emotionally, but practically it was tough to get a boat out there and strong enough to sail.

“After that the focus did change looking to America’s Cup 35 and winning a sporting competition.”

Percy has largely rebuilt the Artemis team since San Francisco. He is tactician as well as team manager, while Nathan Outteridge, an Australian and Olympic champion in his own right, is the skipper and helmsman. There are two more Brits in the sailing team, Chris Brittle and Paul Goodison, the 2008 Olympic gold medal-winner in the Laser.

It is proving a winning blend so far, as they have been the fastest boat in practice racing. That counts for little, though, as all the boats will keep getting faster until the America’s Cup is decided in about six weeks’ time.

“We’ve done a number of race weeks and we haven’t lost many races,” Percy said. “That is definitely flattering, but that was just the stage of development we were at. We need to keep pushing, we need to be faster.

“We need to be better at our manoeuvres because they are all incremental gains, like any technical sport. It’s a case of relentlessly chasing those incremental gains.

“It’s a good place to be, but the truth is that there is not much between us, Oracle and New Zealand. When so many winners are around, smelling the finish and pushing hard, it’s a really cool atmosphere. We are under no illusions that we have to be significantly quicker to win and to be significantly smarter on the racecourse. You have just got to keep pushing, got to keep going.”

Percy’s assessment of the opposition reveals how Sir Ben Ainslie’s Land Rover BAR team are struggling to get up with the pace, but Percy says people should not read too much into the practice racing results.

“BAR haven’t gone well in the practice races, but I don’t think that counts for a whole lot,” he said. “We’re all on a path of constantly improving and you just can’t judge on those practice regattas — but they are never a million miles off. We’re still looking for gains. They are still substantial for us and I am sure they are substantial for BAR.”

With running a team and preparing for his own crucial job as tactician on board, Percy seems unusually relaxed about the task ahead.

“I always sleep all right, even though this race is something I am very passionate about,” he said. “It’s sport. There is a lot going on in the world that is more serious than this; I never try to lose sight of that.

“I’m excited about the event, it’s going to be spectacular. We’ve got 1,400 boats lining the course, we’ve got 60 of the world’s biggest superyachts here and these boats are incredible bits of engineering.

“It’s quite amazing that a boat using only the wind can travel three times faster than the wind. I’ve been through a lot of events over the years, with Olympics and the America’s Cup. The excitement is a positive. It drives you to work harder, but it doesn’t actually affect the result. The result is affected by making gains, by making smarter decisions and being more prepared. That’s where that excitement gets channelled.”