Head to head

Roger Nilson gives his views on the dangerous conflict between The Race Tour and the Volvo Ocean Race

With The Race Tour and the next Volvo Ocean Race going head to head over the winter of 2005/6, some major issues need to be resolved in the world of fully crewed round the world racing or there are fears that both events may fall flat on their respective faces.

At present the offshore racing fraternity are waiting for the new Volvo management to make the decision over what boat will be used next time and what the course will be. A bigger monohull and a course with less stopovers is believed to be the favoured option at present and in his interview with TheDailySail recently the Volvo Ocean Race's new CEO Glenn Bourke indicated that their decision will be announced during London Boat Show.

Meanwhile back in May Bruno Peyron announced The Race Tour, which, like the Volvo Ocean Race will be sailed fully crewed, around the world and with stopovers, but in the giant G-class multihulls and monohulls and on a radically difference course taking in south east Asia and the west coast of the USA.

A man particularly concerned about this is Roger Nilson. The former Swedish doctor needs no introduction to these pages and is uniquely placed to make judgement. He is a veteran Whitbread sailor and has set up campaigns for that race including The Card, Swedish Match and Intrum Justitia and most recently was navigator on board Amer Sports One. He has also sailed big cats with Bruno Peyron since the 1980s and in The Race was aboard Innovation Explorer with Skip Novak and Loick Peyron. He is a big advocate of the new G-class maxis.

For some time now Nilson has been trying to arrange a merger between The Race Tour and the Volvo Ocean Race in what he believes would be the perfect union. "Bruno doesn't yet have the power of Volvo financially. He has the right concept, but not the big money behind him. Volvo is lacking the vision but has the money - so why not merge? It makes so much sense and would be a simple gain. And also by doing that you would also merge the Anglo-Saxon and French sailing cultures and Volvo is partly owned by Renault and the French market is a big market for Volvo."

The collision course the two events are currently taking Nilson believes could end in catastrophic failure. "The marketplace in this very narrow field is not big enough to get commercial partners for two competitions." He also feels that having two conflicting fully crewed round the world races running concurrently will also be a disaster from a media perspective.

A meeting with Volvo took place in Sweden in September where Nilson and Peyron put to them the idea of the merger, but was rebuffed. "They [Volvo] basically said that the market is big enough to have two competitions - good luck with your competition and we'll do our best with our competition. And I think that is completely wrong..." he says. "I have this group, who also thinks this is wrong."

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