RYA lads up for selection

Three Volvo RYA Keelboat sailors try out for ABN AMRO

Eighteen sailors, including three Volvo RYA Keelboat Team Members, are in Holland this week to try and earn a place on Team ABN AMRO for the 2005/6 Volvo Ocean Race.

Arriving in Holland at the beginning of the week, Simon Shaw, Jeremy Elliot and Paul Campbell-James, who have been members of the Volvo RYA Keelboat Squad since its infancy, have already survived the first cut to make it into the final twelve, of which five will be selected tomorrow evening (11 March) to go on to the final trials.

Team ABN AMRO have two boats entered in the Volvo Ocean Race and the selected eight crew from the ‘Big Brother’ style trials, who are all aged between 21 and 30, will compete on the second boat with four core crew members in the 2005/6 Volvo Ocean Race.

Under the guidance of sailing director Roy Heiner, the twelve team members who are now left in the international trial will spend today and tomorrow on the water, showing off their variety of sailing skills, in the hope of their name being called by Heiner in tomorrow afternoon’s announcement.

They will then go on to join the fifteen sailors, who have already been selected from ABN AMRO’s home markets of Brazil, the Netherlands and the US, in a further two weeks of trials with the final eight, made up of two sailors from each category, being announced on 25 March 2005.

One of the primary objectives of the Volvo RYA Keelboat Programme, since its induction in 2003, has been to provide respected and credited training to the sailors in the squad with the hope that some of them will go on to compete in some of the worlds prestigious keelboat events. The fact that these three sailors have made it this far through the selection process is credit to their hard work and dedication as well as testimony to the Programme’s success.

Shaw commented so far on the trials, “There are really good people here. It will be quite a task for the selectors to take it down to five and then to the final two in Portugal next week.”

For further information on the Volvo RYA Keelboat Programme visit http://www.rya.org.uk/Racing/Keelboats/.