Ross Field to sail on News Corp

Ed Gorman speaks to the Kiwi Whitbread vet about how his team is shaping up

The game of shadow-boxing the opposition and talking up your own chances is well under way in the run-up to the start of the first Volvo Ocean Race which is now just three months away. Ross Field, the syndicate boss of News Corp, has long experience in this, as he has on the round-the-world course itself, and the former skipper of Yamaha is sounding ominously confident.

"We're very happy with our crew - we have a topline crew," he said this week on a flying visit to London. "We have remained in New Zealand and remained very-low key really, just plugging away, doing our thing, recruiting the right guys, doing our sail testing and getting things into place. We're comfortable with where we are at."

Field is not afraid to talk about winning either. "I believe that we are a very strong candidate and we will win the race, but we're not going to get out there like we did on Steinlager and have a 200-mile lead half way through the first leg and then disappear into the wilderness and win every leg. It's going to be a struggle and there are going to be a lot of battles. But ultimately we've got the boat, the crew and we've done our homework correctly and we can win it," he said.

In truth no one knows how the Volvo field will shape up and we probably will not have a proper handle on it until at least the Cape Town stopover in late October. In the meantime, everyone involved is sounding as confident as they can while probably worrying in private that one or more of their rivals might have found a big jump in the sail programme, or in another area, that could make them look stupid.

However Field appears to have made a lot of the right moves in recent months. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has never sponsored a professional round-the-world campaign in sailing before but it has given its first attempt all the money it might need with a budget, according to Field, of $11-15 million for a one-boat campaign.

The syndicate went to Bruce Farr for its new Cookson's-built boat which hit the water in Auckland a month ago and is now on its way to New York for an official launch in mid-July. Awaiting the new boat, the sailing team worked hard in New Zealand over the winter on its training yacht - one of the former Merit Cup boats from the last Whitbread - and, in one boat or other, the team has had plenty of time on the water.

continued on page 2...