Volvo update - part 2

Glenn Bourke and Andy Hindley discuss the new entries and their competition

Read part one of our interview with Volvo Ocean Race's Glenn Bourke and Andy Hindley here

Budget-wise the current feeling is that a top of range Volvo Ocean Race campaign for 2005 will cost in the order of US$15 million. "$15 million is roughly what the top end will spend," says Glenn Bourke. "You could spend $25 million or you could do it for $8 million with a Corinthian crew. Salaries are one third, so it depends how you want to do it..."

To date no one has announced that they have secured these kind of funds. In the case of Grant Wharington's Premier Challenge from Australia and the newly announced Team Kan-do from the US, they both have seed funding from private backers and are looking to secure further sponsorship.

Bourke says that a new trend among the entries is the strong teams from each of the ports the race is visiting, whether it is Wharington in Melbourne, Team Kan-do in Annapolis/Baltimore or the prospect of Torben Grael's Brazilian entry. Roy Heiner is also known to be touting a Dutch/South African entry.

All these teams says Bourke are working with the host ports. "They’re all tying in governments because they can see the benefits of hosting the race and the double benefit of fielding a team."

Among other countries possibly waiting to return with a campaign is Russia. Interestingly whoever comes out of the woodwork first in the Baltic will stand a good chance of securing the finish port of the Volvo Ocean Race. "Imagine the enthusiasm you would get if you finished the race in St Petersburg," says Bourke. "The finish isn’t a big investment for a town. It only lasts about two days. If they got in before a German or a Polish team or Stig [Westergaard, Danish Olympian] then we’d have to consider it. We won’t finish in Gothenburg."

In terms of the technology that Volvo will be supplying the boats, Andy Hindley says it will be a similar amount to last time in terms of safety and comms gear. "We have worked very hard to improve the media [TV] transmission quality and time. The satellite technology hasn’t improved because Inmarsat have had to delay the launch of their new satellites which would have given us 435 kilobyte/sec access. However we have a three fold improvement through compression software. And the improvement is noticeable and you can see it..."

At present no further progress has been made in the prospect of taking a dedicated media person on board each boat during the race. The present feeling is that the likes of illbruck's Ray Davies and Assa Abloy's Richard Mason did a good enough job last time as an additional role to their crew roles.

"I think we will be more benevolent dictators - if we can do it, we’ll do it," says Bourke. "As long as there is some sort of equity among the boats. We won’t have the socialist doctrine where everyone has to do everything. There are some things we will stipulate that will be of benefit to the event and even to the teams even though they might not like doing it.

"Another one is owners or sponsors reps. A lot of seed funding is given by a wealthy individual who has sailing as part of their background. Then do we create a niche for them to sail in certain portions of the race and if they don’t take them, then can they take the media person who is consumately knowledgeable about the oceans? Maybe we'll leave the choice to be theirs - in certain parts they can take a sponsor or a media person, and they can write a bit more interestingly."

Onto the subject of competition to the Volvo Ocean Race and Bourke sits up. "The Race being out there and not happening? Let me make two statements - show me the boats, show me the principle sponsor and show me the sponsors who are prepared to take that kind of risk. I don’t mean physical risk of boats flipping over, I mean commercial risk with all the other factors unknown. I can tell you we have five teams who are well down the route - who else has that? I can tell you we have a sponsor which backs it to the value of many millions of dollars, that is blue chip, sensible, pragmatic, and will market the race."

With Steve Fossett making the call to take on the Jules Verne Trophy instead of The Race and more recently Tracy Edwards announcing much the same, organiser Bruno Peyron is considering the postponement of The Race, which is supposed to start from Marseilles on 29 February 2004.

With potential competitors in the Volvo Ocean Race, The Race and the Antarctica Cup all looking for sponsorship, there is a possibility that the market will become so diluted that none of these events will get enough boat sponsors to allow them to happen. "That is what worries all of us," agrees Bourke. "I don’t have any problem with Bruno [Peyron] and The Race. That is an arm of the sport that has a valuable and a valid niche. But if you can’t get it up, don’t swap it to be something else, just put your hands up and say 'okay, I’ll go and find a sponsor for a Volvo boat, because I know that regatta is going on'.

"Time is the thing. People run out of time and things get put back and as soon as you do that there is a big question mark that falls over everything you do. I’m not saying we are in the box seat. We have a limited amount of time which we think we’ve sorted out reasonably well, but take the Antarctica Cup - changes classes, venues, years and it has lost its momentum. So why do we keep talking about the Antarctica Cup? Why don’t we just understand that the sailing community has said this isn’t strong enough to support it, let’s support the few stand out events that exist."

At present the Volvo Ocean Race is - touch wood - looking in good shape, but Bourke has raised an interesting point: Should a governing body such as ISAF be dictating that the Volvo Ocean Race is 'it' when it comes to fully crewed round the world racing or should they continue the present laisser-faire attitude allowing market forces to dictate. The former approach would possibly make the sport stronger forcing sponsors to focus on the 'one game in town'. But where would we be without 100+ft multihulls screaming around the world? The answer is - probably still racing IOR boats.