Match race demon

James Boyd spoke to Magnus Holmberg last year's Swedish Match Tour champion now helmsman for Victory Challenge

The team initially carried out training in Sete, alongside Alinghi before moving to Auckland where they seem to have been out on the water come rain or shine. "Within the sailing team we don't have any experience in the America's Cup before, so we are starting from scratch," explains Holmberg. "We have a very talented group of sailors, including top Olympic sailors in the Soling and top matchers. So we have talented sailors but we definitely need a lot of time on the water to learn how to sail the boats and to get the most out of them. So we have prioritised being on the water a lot of hours and have quality sailing rather than spending a lot of time in the office, having big meetings..."

Rather than have a design syndicate like the other campaigns, the design of the syndicate's new boats has been placed squarely on the shoulders of Mani Frers who worked with Prada four years ago. "He is fully in charge of the design. It could be good, it could be bad, but at least the designer can fully put his ideas into practise and doesn't have to compromise with other designers. So far we have been very pleased," says Holmberg. The new boats were constructed at a special facility in Gothenberg.

Boat number one was launch on 27 October last year and then shipped to Auckland. In line with the team's desire to get the maximum amount of time out on the Hauraki Gulf the new SWE-63 was almost the first of the new generation ACC boats to be launched. "Alinghi was a couple of days before us, but the first boat was launched [in Auckland] in November, " says Holmberg. "So we've put a lot of hours into the boat which is really good. We've been able to break down things and find out what needs to be improved structurally and we've also been able to do a lot of testing and give a lot of input to Mani Frers for the second boat."

Aside from being able to buy NZL-38, it has been noted that the team have also been training with Team New Zealand and it was rumoured that the Swedes had a 'special arrangement' with the defenders. Holmberg denies this: "We have no special agreement, it's just that it's worked out well that once in a while we go out and sail a couple of matches against them. It's not sort of any agreement. It's just they're interested in sailing against us and we need someone to sail against to put the pressure on the guys on the team and get and do some more serious sailing."

Just to make life awkward Victory Challenge's first boat is called Örn (pronounced 'Urn') while the second boat, SWE-73 is called Orm (pronounced UURRRRrrrrnnn, with a harder U and more rolled R sounds). Holmberg says that Orm is a development of Örn, but will say no more. We look forward to Peter Montgomery getting his tongue round these...

The team took Orm on her first outing yesterday and are now deep into speed testing with their two current generation boats. The afterguard on board for the Louis Vuitton Cup will include with Banks or Holmberg, tactician Stefan Rahm and Mats Johanssen. "He's is tactics and strategist," says Holmberg of Johanssen's role on board. "He doesn't have that much match racing experience, but he's been top of the game in the Star boat for the last 15-20 years and been ranked in the top five for the last 10 years. And it's very nice to have someone who is such a good sailor both being on the boat and in charge of the project. That's a strength we have. We have a very flat organisation with one manager. We don't have a lot of layers with different bosses."

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Örn during early sea trials