Where it all went wrong

Ed Gorman looks at the plight of the seven boats which have not made the grade in the Volvo Ocean Race

The first Volvo Ocean Race isn't over but the finishing order is starting to take on a fairly static look with illbruck firmly on course for overall honours and Assa Abloy reasonably secure in second with a handy five-point margin over Amer Sports One in third place.

The main issue between now and the finish at Kiel is which team is going to end up in third place, with Grant Dalton on Amer One facing the twin challenges of Jez Fanstone's News Corp just two points behind in fourth and Kevin Shoebridge's Tyco one point further back in fifth. With Dee Smith on tactics - arguably the best in the fleet - my money is on Dalts to hang in there over two short tactically demanding final stages.

It may not be quite over but it is certainly not too early to have a look at what has gone wrong with the 'other seven' - that is, everyone except illbruck. The first thing to say is that the answer for any of the boats in the top-five is "not much". We should not forget that illbruck has set an extremely high standard in every aspect of its campaign - funding, management, sailors, shore team, sails, rig, and boat in that order (roughly) - and this has been the closest round-the-world race ever.

So none of the top four after illbruck can be classed a disaster. Not good enough yes, but not rubbish either. The same cannot be said at the other end of the fleet where three teams have been outclassed. The all-women crew on Amer Sports Too is the special case because no one ever expected them to finish anything other than last. The question was, how well could they do and could they avoid finishing last on the water in every leg?

So far they have lived up to expectations but, in reality, they had no chance of doing anything else. Dalton being late was a 'big ask', the girls being late and on the campaign's 'B-boat' made it impossible for Lisa McDonald. Some have criticised her over-cautious approach as a skipper and suggested that others may have done a better job, but it's a fairly academic argument. The plight of the girls has not been helped by a lack of resource going their way in areas such as new sails - although Nautor Challenge must be commended for the efforts they have gone to to keep the girls in the race following their dismasting. As far as their sponsors go, the Amer Sports Too campaign has been hugely successful, having generated an inordinate amount of publicity.

djuice has been the biggest disappointment in the fleet. The analytical bit here is not complicated. They got the boat wrong and they have no one to blame but themselves. The notion that you could go off on a tangent in a race that has been totally dominated by Bruce Farr and build two identical Laurie Davidson hulls without a Farr model to pace them against, looked risky and potentially foolhardy. Back at Southampton the mutterings about the boat were well underway before the race had even started. Since then we have seen plenty of evidence that djuice is slow.

The campaign is one of Norway's biggest ever sporting sponsorships and the Norwegians expect success. Knut Frostad must take responsibility for getting it wrong, even as he shuffles and re-shuffles his crew and sails. It is hard to see how anyone would ever give him money to do this sort of race again as djuice heads for the ignominy of a seventh overall finish which is effectively last.

Team SEB is the next biggest failure with another massive budget - thought to be around $22 million - and yet they are on course for nothing better than sixth. This is certainly not the outcome that Gunnar Krantz or his sponsors would have envisaged even in their worst nightmares. SEB is a curious one. In some respects there was nothing wrong with this campaign at all. The boat is thought to be the narrowest but not that extreme, the crew is full of experience as is the skipper. You could argue that they are simply the victims of bad luck with two retirements from successive legs.

But somewhere along the line things have gone badly wrong. Krantz appears to have wanted to control every last aspect of his campaign and to his own cost. Team SEB was not a happy ship as evidenced by the decision to get off as early as Auckland by watch leader Matt Humphries, something which came as a big surprise to Krantz. The fate of Krantz, as also with Frostad, underlines the rule that past experience as a skipper in the recent history of this event makes you less likely to win than more so. Preconceptions, inflexible ways of doing things and exaggerated self-belief are some of the dangers.

Continued on page 2...

Where it all when right...John Kostecki's illbruck Challenge