Great Britain has not had to worry about its coaches being poached by others since shortly after inventing a sport, but that is changing and the Royal Yachting Association may need to act quickly to protect what has become a highly sought after regime after three increasingly successful Olympic Games.

Sailing, Great Britain’s second highest achieving sport after cycling in Beijing, with four gold medals, a silver and a bronze, is resigned to losing one of it key coaches already and others are being courted.

Pete Cunningham, The RYA senior sports science officer since before Lottery funding started in 1997, will take up the same role with Britain’s Team Origin, when the 33rd America’s Cup finally gets out of the courts and into the water.

Cunningham began working with Team Origin last year before the project was put on ice and The RYA are lucky that he will be around for a ‘soft’ handover to his replacement. But it may leave a huge hole. Cunningham is revered by the team and of all the much hailed backroom staff it is his name that is repeated most.

“He’ll be impossible to replace is the reality,” Iain Percy, the gold medallist in the Star class, said. “He is the best in his field.” Percy along with his Star partner Andrew Simpson and Ben Ainslie will be working with Cunningham as part of the Team Origin crew. Sir Keith Mills, the Team Origin founder, is also on the board of the 2012 London Olympics so will help where he can.

“We’ve got a good relationship with Team Origin so we don’t see that as a threat,” Stephen Park, the Great Britain sailing manager, said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for Pete. Also, realistically, Pete’s worked with us for 20 years, you’ve got to expect that there’s going to be some change and I think that’s healthy anyway.

But we hope to the keep the key people.” One of those key people is Park, or Sparky, as he is universally known, has been running the Olympic programme for eight years since after the Sydney Games.

“There are other countries that have approached me and asked me if I would be interested in having a discussion with them in helping their teams move on and I am absolutely certain that will be same for other members of our support staff,” Park said.

“That is a risk. But it is a risk in any successful business and it is just whether you can provide enough reason for people to stay involved with the winning project.” Unprompted, Nick Rogers, who won a silver medal in the 470 dinghy class with Joe Glanfield, in the last two Olympics, picked out the work the Park as vital for the team.

"Sparky has been hugely important in keeping the organisation going,” Rogers said. “He’s got a thankless job and he’s not really paid what he’s worth. (I bet his phone’s) been ringing non-stop. The problem we’ve got is always bureaucracy, it’s how much he can be paid otherwise someone will be upset by it?

For goodness sake, that’s not the point, it’s how much is he worth?” “As the team is more successful there will be a bigger pool of money and so I’d like to think it will be more balanced. If we lose our coach to another sport purely because someone isn’t prepared to have someone below them paid more, then that is ridiculous.”

Park picked out the health and nutrition side as being one area that really shone at these games. Paul Goodison, the gold medallist in the Laser class, was handing out compliments lightly but could praise Eddie Stephens, the team chef, enough.