Racing or Cruising?

Are Amer Sports Too taking it easy and staying safe asks Peter Bentley.

Who is trimming?

While McDonald scored enormous success in recruiting highly skilled female sailors, the pool of talent for her to choose from was very small in comparison to the wider world of sailing. Even in the last decade, women have been welcomed into top level sailing sporadically and it is a well to remember that there were no women's events at the sailing regatta in the Olympics until 1988.

The days when a group of even exceptional sailors could simply get together at a few weeks notice and win anything in top level of sailing are long gone. And in the Volvo Ocean Race the level of experience in the rest of the fleet is simply awesome this time around. Many of the other boats have crews with three or four Whitbread Round the World Races under their belts. Amer Sports One's skipper, Grant Dalton is on his sixth circumnavigation. No one aboard Amer Sports Too has done more than one race before.

As if this was not enough, the Volvo Ocean Race is now full-on professional racing. To win the Volvo Ocean Race requires the same level of preparation, dedication and commitment as any other professional sport. While the dedication and commitment of the Amer Sports Too crew are beyond doubt their preparation can only be described as inadequate - through no fault of their own. In short, the Amer Sports Too Crew started the race with a huge disadvantage not of their own making.


Team SEB hard at work in similar conditions.