Roy Heiner speaks out

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

So when did you get on board with Assa Abloy ?

They spoke to me about a year after the last race and I said 'well, I'm interested to do the race but we're trying to organise our own campaign.' They came back to me and back to me all the time and, in the end, I joined them at the beginning of November.

I always remember you standing on the dock at Sao Sebastiao in Brazil at the end of the Southern Ocean leg on that incredible night when BrunelSunergy (the boat Roy skippered in the last Whitbread after the original skipper, Hans Bouscholte, got off in Fremantle) had came in second.

It was amazing wasn't it? I couldn't believe that so many people were on the dock at three o'clock in the morning, it was very special.

I remember you saying something along the lines that this was going to be a watershed for Dutch sailing and you were talking about your plans for this race even then. So you must be disappointed that you weren't able to build your own campaign this time round?

We were very disappointed that we didn't sell it well enough or get the support. Basically the only downside was that we went through the Millennium and people didn't know financially what was going to happen in the future or on the 1st January 2000. Apart from that the business climate was good and, sportingwise, it was good too. BrunelSunergy was very good for people. The Dutch won the Admiral's Cup and there was a lot going on in the Olympic field, so there was a lot of interest in our sport. It was very sad to see that we got so close but just did not get there. We even had decisions change at board meetings - that was really sad and I wonder how it's ever going to happen.

So how much is this campaign Roy Heiner's campaign or how much is it a campaign that you have come into and skippered where a lot of the decisions had already been made?

In this campaign I'm a hired skipper. A lot of the decisions had been taken, especially on the boats. Maybe I think it's good that way - it's very much a team approach. There's a lot of people involved with most of the decisions, they definitely do not come from one person. Jason Carrington did an amazing amount of work on the boat together with Albert (Neil Graham) and Magnus Olsson has been very important in the whole process.

Magnus is with you on the first leg, do you see him staying on board after that? No comment.

It's possible. The poor man's 52 years old. It's very good to take Magnus on the first leg. He's an amazing sailor in his own right, absolutely fantastic, but especially for the first leg. It's just all that experience and the first legs in this race tend to be difficult.

Page three.... The right way to do it.
Page four.... Life after the Volvo Ocean race.