Roy Heiner on the Volvo and the Olympics

Rocky Roy is relishing the challenge of skippering the ASSA ABLOY syndicate and he wants match racing back in the Games, he tells Ed Gorman

Roy, how do you feel about taking charge on ASSA ABLOY?
Fantastic - it's an honour to sail with the best people in the business.

Clearly you will skipper on the water but what will your wider role be?
I will choose the crew though I'm not the type of person that believes in choosing the crew myself. I believe the crew should be choosing the crew, so to speak. Obviously I will be selecting, with Mark Rudiger ( the navigator and co-skipper), some key players, but I think it's up to all the key players and ourselves to choose the remainder of the crew. So far it's me and Rudi and Jason Carrington and Klabbe Nylof and we will appoint two more people shortly. I will be responsible for the whole sailing and technical side of the campaign.

Who is the key guy on the shoreside at present in the ASSA ABLOY syndicate?
That's Magnus Olsson (technical director) at the moment . A shore manager has yet to be appointed but Magnus is responsible for the building of the boat and who better could there be to work with?

The Sydney-Hobart will be your first outing?
The Sydney-Hobart is a race but we have to be realistic. We don't have the luxury of winning - we just have to get the boat up (the old Chessie Racing), get the new mast in, get some sails on board, pull the string and go sailing. The first of our new boats (being built at Green Marine in Southampton) will be finished halfway through April, so we'll call it the beginning of May.

With the experience of skippering BrunelSynergy in the 1997/98 race, what do you consider to be the key to success in the first Volvo Ocean Race?
I think, at the moment, it's all about getting the right people in the right positions. People that can make decisions and people that can carry the campaign - you can't do all of that yourself. Obviously getting into the process of optimising the materials is key. The testing programme is really important and we need to start looking at the details of making the boat go faster. I think in the end, all the skippers believe and all the crews from the last race know, that adding sail area is always fast, so obviously that's no secret. I think the secret's going to lie in the ability to sail the boat all the time at 100% - not sometimes at 97% - but keeping the foot down at all stages.

Are you disappointed that there look like being only six boats on the startline after the very optimistic hopes for the race when Volvo took over?
To be honest with you, it would be nice if we had eight boats on the startline; nine would have been nicer because it's the same as last time round. Realistically I think we have to realise that it is not easy to take over an event and re-brand it. People have to get confident with it again. Owning an event is different to being a sponsor of an event and other people have to get familiar with that type of solution. But I do think that the track record of Volvo has been to step into a sport and stay there for a long time and this will be a difficult period but I think it's going to be fantastic for sailing in the long run.

But you believe the Volvo is still a race worth winning?
I think this is the race worth winning. There is also the America's Cup, but looking at the endurance-type races, it doesn't get much better than the Volvo Ocean Race.

In the last Whitbread there was great pressure on the navigators and tacticians and people are already talking of taking more than one crew in this department on the Volvo. Are you thinking of doing that?
Yes. We have talked about it and we are looking into the possibility of assistance on the meteorological side and navigating side. The race is interesting in the sense that it is not only ocean racing but you go from La Rochelle to Gothenburg and then to Kiel and you go from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore. There's all types of legs when you go round a lot of marks and when match racing ability and short course racing is more important than ocean racing. I can well imagine we could end up with a crew of more than 12 people. On some legs you might want two navigators on the boat, on others you might want more match racing-orientated people.

That's the future, let's look back for a moment to Sydney. You went to the Games as many people's favourite for gold after a great season in Solings. Have you come to terms with returning empty-handed?
You wake up every morning and you think 'great day' and then half a minute later you go 'oh shit'....and that's happened every day since Sydney, including today. But that's why top sport is so great. You are pushing the limits. You know that you can win and at the Olympics on the day you've got to be the best and that's the challenge.

Do you know what went wrong in Sydney for Team Heiner?
We had a problem in the campaign right from the the first day. These campaigns are all about people and at the Olympics everybody can sail well. The question is, what's the difference between just being there and winning? We had a problem which we were just not able to solve. We threw a lot of money at it, we were aware of it, but we couldn't solve it. It was one set of conditions where we we just not fast enough and did not sail well enough.

So you will be back at the next Games?
I will be free for the next Olympics but what is the ISAF doing? I'm not sure they've got all their balls in the right bag. I can believe that people don't want to sail the Soling or whatever, but I don't understand that they have got rid of match racing - I just can't comprehend it. Match racing should be in the Olympics and I don't care what the ISAF says, so personally I will be promoting match racing.

Good luck Roy and look forward to seeing you on the Volvo circuit.