The Swedish Holmberg

In part 2 of our inteview with him, Magnus Holmberg talks about the Swedish Match Tour

Continued on from part 1...

While his focus is currently on Victory Challenge, Magnus Holmberg's other interest is the Swedish Match Tour. This series of international match racing events is obviously a hot bed for America's Cup talent and Holmberg was overall winner of the 2000-1 season.

Aside from his Olympic career Holmberg took part in numerous international match racing events and was suitably inspired to establish the annual match racing event in Marstrand, Swede. This has since become the premier event in the Swedish Match Tour. "I sold the idea to the club and to the main sponsors, Swedish Match, and worked as project manager for the event for six years or so," explains Holmberg. "It was first held in 1994. After going around to all the match racing events as a skipper I thought we should have an event like that in Sweden. I have been involved a little bit the whole time pretty much up until the time I started to get involved in Victory Challenge, then I dropped my engagement."

He has many ideas about how the Tour could be developed. "There could probably be one or two more events, but I think the important thing is to raise the level of the individual events," he told madfor sailing. "That will be important for the future of the Tour."

One way of doing this is to introduce a fleet of one design match racing boats that would be shipped around between events. Sports marketing companny, Octagon, who run the Tour (but not all the individual events it comprises) are currently looking into this. "That would be a great idea," says Holmberg. "I think that would be very helpful for different reasons. One reason is the possibility for anyone to organise an event and at this stage one major obstacle for a lot of yacht clubs or promoters would be getting the right sort of boats. So if the Tour could provide the boats you have a lot more potential organisers that could run Tour events.And it is important to get a unified image for the event."

Octagon have approached several boat manufacturers about this, but Holmberg believes a purpose-built design would work best. "It is important to have a big enough boat to make some sort of impression," he says. "Match racing in smaller boats, doesn't work particularly well on television and I think it doesn't make for as interesting match racing either. It takes a lot more skills with bigger boats and also for the image of the Tour it is important that the boat looks modern and looks a bit like the America's Cup boats. I don't think it is particularly good when people turn on the televsion or go to events and it could be the cruising boat they go sailing on with their family [that is being raced]. So the look of the boat is important as well."

Up until the recent UBS Challenge in Newport, a majority of America's Cup teams had representation on the Tour and were using the events as part of their training schedule. "It is important to stay in touch with the tactics and the rules and things like that and it is important for the sailors to get some racing in to get the exciting and noise of a racing situation. With an America's Cup challenge you can be training for a couple of years and you never really get into any racing situations." AC campaigns tend to spend a majority of the time prior to the Louis Vuitton Cup speed testing their boats rather than honing their match race skill.

However there are marked differences between sailing the AC and a Swedish Match Tour event as Holmberg explains: "There are longer courses on the America's Cup which make the tactics a bit of different and of course it is in bigger boats and normally you have longer to make decisions. The good thing about the Tour is that you have to step-up your decision making. You have to be a lot quicker in your thinking and your decision making which is good and when you get back into your Cup boat it feels like you have a bit more time." It has been interesting to note on the Tour that some of the skippers, in particular Danes such as Jes Gram-Hansen and Jesper Radich, who are not involved in Cup campaigns, are every bit as potent on the water as their AC rivals.

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