Visiting the Oracle

Ed Gorman spoke to Peter Holmberg about life in Larry Ellison's team

As far as the hardware goes, Holmberg perhaps predictably denied that the two keel failures on the Bruce Nelson-designed former AmericaOne yachts had caused much disruption. He highlighted again the rules issue which prevents Oracle from knowing exactly how the fins were designed and how they were fixed to the hull and said he and his colleagues were surprised how badly the attachment was achieved and how quickly they failed. But despite the inevitable delays when new fins had to be made, neither failure had been a major setback. "The team has done a good job at muscling through it," he said.

The recent mast failure was another minor setback, he claimed. "It is part of the learning process as new products come on line - that mast had some mechanical failures that were beyond anyone's control but that happened now and not a year from now," he said.

Most analysts would imagine that Oracle's two new Bruce Farr America's Cup class yachts, the first of which is already on its way to Auckland from California, will be either very similar or identical. We put it to Holmberg that one might be a development of the other. "No that doesn't...I can't say yes or no to that," he replied. So are they identical? "Could be".

Holmberg reckons the amounts of money and talent being applied to the design side makes it likely that another big performance jump will be achieved for the next Louis Vuitton Cup. "As far as our programme is concerned, I'm not going to tell you we have a winged keel, if we did have one," he said. "We are very happy - we've put some huge horse-power into our design programme. Bruce Farr and company and some super-computers at Compaq and Oracle Systems have helped us and Bruce Farr is feeling pretty darn comfortable at the advances that have been made," he added.

To end with madfor sailing asked Holmberg about his own personal goals. Was this the biggest challenge of his career? "I would call this the biggest opportunity of my career, not the biggest challenge," he said. "The biggest challenge was when I tried to do this from a little island in the Caribbean - that was a challenge. This is a great opportunity and personally I'm trying to make the very best of it. The key is trying to find the right balance between enjoying it and being myself and at the same time maximising the opportunity to learn and perform."