Chatting to the giants

A pre-Colorcraft Gold Cup conference call with series leader Magnus Holmberg and the great Peter Gilmour

Q: We have the first year's champion from Swedish Match Play on the Tour, Bertrand Pacé. We also have Ed Baird who has done well in the past, and, of course, that other Holmberg guy, Peter, is coming as well.
MH: Well, it sure sounds like a good field, again, in Bermuda and I'm sure that all of those teams that you are mentioning are going to be really tough. I know Bertrand has been struggling a bit in Bermuda before, so we will see how he will do this time. Maybe he will have to practice some high-jumps to get up on the weather rail, but I'm sure he'll be really wanting to make a good result in Bermuda.

And Peter Holmberg is always very strong in Bermuda. That's one of the places where he likes the boats and the conditions, and of course he feels like basically he's in his home court. So I'm sure all of those guys, the teams that you are mentioning are going to be very strong.

Q: And we were just talking there about the seeded field. If you run through the unseeded field, there's a few young unknowns like Gavin Brady from the Prada Syndicate, a very hot Kiwi who has done well here in the past, some newcomers like Britain's Mark Campbell-James who just did very, very well in their National Championships in Britain two weeks ago. Peter Gilmour, give me your feeling on who you are going to be looking at particularly hard in the competition?

:PG: Well, I think as always, the draw has a big impact on the Bermuda Gold Cup and where you finish up, and that probably is not yet finalized at this stage . . . I'm not sure. But, you know, whoever you race, however it shakes down, there's obviously that nervous little flutter in the first round for the seeded sailors that have come through against the unseeded sailors who have just had several days racing.

Then after that, you really just need to settle down to take on each round as it comes up. I must say, I look forward to being there again this year. I think it's going to be very hard . . . certainly be hard to focus on sailing anything after the tragedy of the last two weeks. This will be our first real event back after a time. I'm really quite interested to see the demeanor and spirits of everybody. It will be fabulous to see people and shake their hands and enjoy the spirited competition.

Q: The other unseeded skipper I should have mentioned is Ken Read, who was driving the Stars and Stripes (in New Zealand) for Dennis Conner last time and is coming down here making his first visit for this event. The Stars and Stripes campaign, have Dennis Conner in the seeded ranks and Ken Read in the unseeded ranks; so they will give you some competition there.

Q: How do you feel about that pressure there?

MH: That's all right. I know how hard the competition is at every event, so going into the event, you always hope to win, but it's always too much to expect that you -- you know, that you will win. But I guess from the seeding, from the ranking, I guess we are probably seeded No. 1. That's all right. But it's very hard out here. I think it's very hard to predict, and it's very hard before the event to predict one particular team to be sort of the favorite or expected to win an event.