Roy Heiner speaks out

Everything you wanted to know but didn't dare to ask.

In the last of his interviews conducted just before the start of the Volvo Ocean Race, Ed Gorman spoke to the Assa Abloy co-skipper, Roy Heiner, about a painful Olympics, the experience of BrunelSunergy in the last Whitbread and about Assa Abloy and why, even that campaign, is still not his ideal answer for the Volvo Ocean Race.

Roy, how long did it take you to get over what happened in Sydney when you went from what looked like a certain medal, even the gold, to finishing fourth?

You never get over it - you wake up with it every morning.

I remember you saying that in Sydney, you're still saying it.

It hurts, always will. But that's sport.

But it was a painful one for you because you were looking so good early on and then it all fell apart.

Yeah, we were pretty much on track. It's especially painful because we lost it on something that we knew about in the beginning but we just couldn't solve in the team and that makes it sad. But on the other hand, it's part of sport I guess. You've got to be perfect especially in the Olympics when you have a lot of one-designs. You have to be perfect in all facets and with match racing it was basically deciding where the wind was going to come from which eventually made the difference between winning and losing and we made more mistakes than others. We were ahead in the races, we made more mistakes than Jochen (Schumann) - we deserved to lose.

Obviously that was a blow. But a lot of guys came away from Sydney, as always at the Games, licking their wounds. You then went into trying to raise money for this race and you tried hard.

We had been doing that full-time before Sydney and we actually cancelled our efforts just before the Games in terms of finding sponsorship for the Volvo.


Page two.... Why Assa Abloy? Page three.... The right way to do it.
Page four.... Life after the Volvo Ocean race.