Mr Match Racer - Magnus Holmberg

Bob Fisher spoke to the Swede shortly after winning the Swedish Match Tour.

By finishing third in the ACI Ronhill Cup, Magnus Holmberg has become the Swedish Match Tour champion. In this match racing series he has recorded an unbeatable score of 95 points with two events to go and had quite a smile on his face when Bob Fisher caught up with him at Split on the Adriatic coast of Croatia. The Swede has twice represented his country at the Olympic Games and is to skipper the Victory Challenge yacht in the America’s Cup trials for the Louis Vuitton Cup in October 2002.
madforsailing: This has been a highly successful year for you, hasn't it?

Magnus Holmberg: It has been a really good year for us - a lot of good events and I am quite satisfied the way the last year has been completed.

madforsailing : But it is getting tougher?

MH: Yes, you can see that it is. There is a lot of close racing at the top of the events and we have had a very good strike rate - not a lot of low places and the lowest ones have been quite well up in the lists. We have performed well in all the events even those we haven’t won. We’ve taken points for the tour at every event.

madforsailing: You were looking good for the Swedish Match Tour for most of this year anyway.

MH: Yes, but it was still in the balance before this event. There were three more events and while we had the chance to take more points, our opponents could have also scored high points, but in the end we were able to score enough so that no one could beat us.

madforsailing: We have new people in the game now - I was going to say with the America’s Cup syndicates, but of course you are one of them now - but it is these boys who have come in who have upped the level of the Tour.

MH: The conclusion from most of the syndicates is that the match racing part of the America’s Cup is getting more and more important. It seems like those boats are getting more and more even in the hulls, sails and rigs, and so on; the more even the boat speed, the more important the match racing.

madforsailing: You are going to be in among that group shortly, how is your syndicate progressing?

MH: We are quite happy with the way that it has been progressing. We are fortunate enough in not having to worry about the money. We are well funded, we have all the money we need - not an enormous amount and we have to prove every Swedish Crown that we spend - but we don’t need any sponsors to make it to the racing, which is very good because we can concentrate on our training and sailing. We don’t have to spend time on marketing and going to sponsor meetings. We need all the time that we have because the team has the best Scandinavian sailors there are, but we are lacking America’s Cup experience. It’s a lot of hard work we have in front of us, so we need all the time we can get.

For more on the Scandinavian America's Cup campaign see page 2...