Off the pace

Peter Bentley asks why Amer Sports Too fell so far behind on the first leg of the Volvo

A poor performance by Amer Sports Too has done little for the image of women in the field of Ocean Racing. Hard as they tried, brave also-rans is hardly the kind of image that Lisa McDonald or any of her crew are trying to create for themselves in the tough world of professional sailing.

The poor performance does not however reflect badly on the crew either as a team or as individuals. By all accounts the 13 women aboard Amer Sports Too have sailed the boat well and on the few occasions they have lined up against the opposition in similar weather conditions, boat speed and crew work has proved very much the equal of the other boats. The tone of the messages coming back from onboard has been unfailingly cheerful and the crew appear to have gelled well as a unit.

None of this however can mask the fact the at Amer Sports Too finished some six hours after the next boat and six days behind the leaders. Both djuice and SEB suffered serious technical problems and made stops to pick up spares while the women’s boat did at least have a clear run at the track.

In many respects, Amer Sports Too simply echoes the performance of EF Education, the only previous all-women’s entry in the 1997-98 Whitbread Round the World Race who finished in last place. The lacklustre performance of both Amer Sports Too and EF Education stem from similar roots. Though the Amer Sports Too crew has been built around experienced women sailors, the opportunities for female crew have been so limited in the past as to severely curtail both the number and true quality of the individuals available for selection. Through no fault of their own, the women are simply not as experienced as the men on a person for person basis and in an event as brutal as the Volvo Ocean Race, it shows.

Most critically, the Nautor Challenge and with it both the Amer Sports boats were late at every stage of preparation. While Dalton and his team have used their vast experience and enormous range of technical skills to work their way through a huge series of problems, the women have struggled with limited resources and patchy knowledge of some of the more technical systems.

Grant Dalton was the first to admit that luck had played a huge part in his second place on the first leg, but to some extent Dalton made his own luck. Together with navigator, Roger Nilson, Dalton used the combined experience of 10 round-the-world races to make the big call and go south at Trindade. The Amer Sports Too crew don’t have 10 round-the-world races between them and the navigator has not done so much as one before. Again it is unfair to criticise individuals who can not be faulted personally for their lack of experience.

While the EF Education was simply underfunded and a poor relation to EF Language, a similar charge can not be laid at Nautor’s door. Leaving his decision on which boat to choose until late, Dalton claims to have devoted equal resources to both boats and the sail inventory was largely similar. Amer Sports Too’s hull design is essentially identical to Assa Abloy though the detailed construction may well be slightly less advanced. The fact remains that the women have a roughly similar boat to the rest of the fleet yet have failed to perform.