Life after Oracle

The Daily Sail catches up with one of its subscribers - world match racing champion and former Oracle helm Peter Holmberg

Peter Holmberg - a biography

Part of Peter Holmberg's success as both an Olympian and as a match racing helm is attributable to his coming from St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

He took to sailing at an early age and was born into an Olympic family - his father represented the US Virgin Islands in the Soling in 1972 at Kiel while his stepfather went to Montreal in 1976.

"As I was growing up and got more serious with sailing I went of university in northern California and a mate there from Sweden was representing Sweden in the Finn class and that’s how I got introduced to the Finn. Anyway I went back home set my sights on the 1984 Olympics, bought a boat and practised for six months and finished 11th."

Sailing for the US Virgin had the advantage of their being little in the way of competition to get a slot - however Holmberg says the downside was having to travel a long way to get any competition.

"That’s when I said, ‘okay, I’ll do it right this time’. I set 1988 as my goal and designed a campaign that I thought would win it. I have a business background from school and put my business thinking to it. I flew to Korea to see the conditions and realised that the best conditions for training were right there in my back yard [in St Thomas] - rough, big breeze, big ocean, so I brought in the competition. I set up a training camp there, brought down a couple of Americans and an Argentinian guy."

The result was a Silver medal in the Finn at the 1988 Olympics.

"It was bit of a surprise. I hadn't done the Worlds, I was an unknown. I hadn't done the classic European circuit. I just showed up in Korea. Top 10 was a nice goal - I sheeted in and I was fast."

That was the end of his Olympic aspirations: "I won the medal. It is a hard road to do from down there. There’s no government funding or support and raising the money on a little island of 50,000 people is hard."

His next step landed in his lap. "Just then was when professional sailing was starting to happen. I was very fortunate that some big boats came through there [St Thomas], some Maxis and some 50s and that gave me the opening into big boat racing - earning money rather than spending money doing the Olympics."

He became a regular hand on board the maxi Matador and many of that crew also sailed on Viktor Forss' IOR50, Carat. Then, as now, having an Olympic gong was the passport on to greater things. "I did the maxi circuit for two years and I did the 50ft circuit for two years and then I made the change into match racing," says Holmberg.

Money-wise he worked on these boats while developing his real estate business in St Thomas.

In 1991 he took to match racing like a duck to water. "Once I did match racing I thought that was going to be the future of the sport personally," he says. "For me it made sense a) I could represent my country. I have pride in my country. I could do that with the Olympics. But I lost all that with the pro circuit. Then along came match racing and it was 'hey, I can represent my country again'. Match racing - it is understandable to the public. If I ever thought that sailing was going to break into the public domain then match racing was going to be it.

"As a sailor I felt it really had all the fundamentals that define a good sailor. It is boat speed, handling, knowledge of the rules and tactics. So anything I did there I could apply as a pro racer - it only bettered myself. So there came my interest in match racing and that led to a ranking."

His way in was similar to his way into the Olympics. "ISAF came up with the Nations Cup where each country could send a representative. There again I was fortunate - I got a slot to go and compete. We qualified in Bermuda and the Nations Cup was in Barcelona.

Remarkably despite being active on the match race circuit Holmberg says he never had any ambitions towards the America's Cup. His big change of heart came in 1995. Team New Zealand had just won the Cup in San Diego and Hurricane Marilyn has decimentated St Thomas taking with it his house, his boat, his office and his business. "It seemed to be a good time to get out of it..."

"We were having our annual carnival and this buddy of mine in the islands challenged me and says 'why don’t we challenge for the America’s Cup'," recounts Holmberg of his next step. "I said 'mate, you’ve got to be kidding that costs millions of dollars.” So we got to talking. He’s a local black fellow, I’m a white fellow and we came up with the concept, that our island was struggling, there were racial tensions, they were a big problem. Next we were trying to rebound from a hurricane that devastated our islands. And everyone’s moaning and can’t get off their arse to get going again and get tourism up.

"And then there’s fundamental - my island is surrounded by water, but the locals are afraid of the water. So forever the future of the island, locals can't embrace our primary interest of tourism if they aren’t involved with the water. So we said 'hey, why don’t we do something outrageous, like an America’s Cup campaign that would bridge all racial lines, we would offer a free community swimming and sails lessons to get the locals out on the water and we’d be putting the islands back on world tourism map, but this outrageous big."

He is immensely proud of how far they got. "We did a damn good job. We raised $250k in six weeks which we set as a goal to launch it. Then we set a goal of raising $2 million within 2-3 months. I remind this is on a little devasted island with no tourism. And we hit that target. So we hired ourselves some designers - David Pedrick and Chris Todter (who was with Oracle, AmericaOne, Stars&Stars and who has been in every Cup since 1983). Then we hired John Cutler, as an experienced America’s Cup sailor (who was later to hire him at Oracle), to help us design our campaign and then we bought USA11 to do something real for the islands - something they could touch and feel.

"Then we were off and running. And then we set deadlines of raising money and we just didn’t make it - we had to raise another X million by a certain date to confirm construction. We kept scaling down our budgets and we had the lowest budget but we weren’t going to do a Mickey Mouse operation and do a Jamaican bobsleigh. We wanted to do it credible."

Instead of simply folding the operation he made some phone calls and was able to sell his campaign on to Team Dennis Conner, where he ended up sailing in the afterguard. "Dennis was really decent in his dealings. He gave all my sponsors privileges in his campaign, without getting any money. He liked what we were doing. He does have the sport’s interest at heart."

And the rest, as they say, is history...