New hand on the tiller

We speak to newly appointed Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad about his latest role

Thinking about it – there aren’t that many people capable of being CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race. In Glenn Bourke’s new replacement, the familiar figure of Norwegian Knut Frostad, the VOR board has been lucky to find someone who appears to have exactly the right credentials.

The fully crewed round the world has been Frostad’s life blood for some 15 years, having first sailed with Lawrie Smith on board Intrum Justitia in 1993 before running his own, and it has to be said somewhat lacklustre, Innovation Kvaerner and djuice dragons campaigns in the next two races. In 2005-6 he sailed half the race with Torben Grael on Brasil 1.



Aside from his strong sailing background Frostad, now 40, also comes with a strong business background having attended Oslo Business School and now running his own management consultancy and team building organisation, The Human Element in Norway. He is on the boards of several companies in his native Scandinavia and has worked for the Swedish equity company that owns the likes of B&G, Simrad, Helly Hansen and Nimbus Boats. Unlike so many professional sailors who enter theboardroom, Frostad does not look uncomfortable wearing a suit.

In recent years Frostad has discovered multihulls in a big way, regularly crewing on Thomas Coville’s ORMA 60 Sodebo and campaigning his own 60ft tri on the Nokia Oops Cup, which seems to have imploded at the same time as the ORMA circuit. He won the Oops Cup in 2004 and came second in the championship on two other occasions.

According to Frostad, when we hooked up with him at the boat show in Amsterdam yesterday for the launch of Volvo’s new range of Volvo Ocean Race-inspired cars, negotiations over his new job started in December while he was mid-way through competing in the ARC about the Norwegian Wally and a regular ride of his, Nariida. The final offer came through in January just as he was about to set off for the Antarctica.

While Frostad’s arrival is welcome it comes at an odd time, prompted by Glenn Bourke having set sail for pastures new, despite the start of the race he’d in many ways recreated being just months away. Because of this, there is little Frostad can do at this stage to make his mark on the event. “My goal is to organise this next event in a way so that all the sailors will realise this is the best race we have, which is a challenge in itself, because although we have a very exciting route and a lot of new things added to the race it also had to happen in a very short time. The whole preparation scheme had one year taken out and we have changed every port except for Gothenberg, Cape Town and Rio. So there is enough on the table to make sure we have a good event. I am not planning on changing much.”

Despite not having his feet under his new desk fully yet, the only modification Frostad has so far made is to insist the Extreme 40 catamaran racing takes place in some of the stopovers. “I am always an enthusiast for those boats.”

Bourke’s vision for this year’s race includes modifications such as now taking the course up through India and the Far East, making for a substantially longer event with shorter stopovers. So how does Frostad feel about these changes? “Most of them I agree very much with. I might have a different angle on some of them.”

Media person

“There has been a lot of discussion about the position of the media person on the boats which I think is the greatest thing they have done,” Frostad continues. “That will make the biggest impact of all the changes to this edition of the race – getting the right people, that is so critical. That 11th person has to be able to deal with being on board these boats for legs which can be up to 35 days, so it is a big ask. You have to be a sailor. You have to know where to stand or not stand and to work smoothly with the crew. It has to be someone who can climb the rig when they want to and he knows it is a good time to do it. Then you have all the opportunity in the world to send stories that were never told.”

During his presentation Frostad had said that 85% of the stories that take place on board are never told, although he won’t elaborate on this... The advent of the media person on board is certainly a step in the right direction, but it seems likely to be one of the most controversial moves too. With video and more general media (we hope) being fired back to shore daily, the Volvo Ocean Race has the potential to be turned into the ultimate in reality TV, but in our view the chance of achieving this is frankly near impossible.

From the perspective of a race pundit ashore we would like to see everything – not just the moments of joy when everything is going right, but also the arguments, fueds, cock-ups, wipe-outs, the personal stuff, the emotion, the human element. It all goes on and would make compelling viewing. But trying to be a fly on the wall and capturing this in the highly charged environment of a race boat, mid-ocean can only end up with the media person being alienated within the crew, and this could make even a 70ft long race boat end up seeming small.

Originally the media person was to have been put on board each boat by Volvo and rotated after each leg. “That would be the best thing because you can get a different angle on different legs from different people.” However this has not been possible for this race due to insurance liability issues. As a result the media person has had to be employed by the teams and it seems inevitable that their output will end up sanitised by the teams, to make the crew look good, resulting in the same anodine footage, albeit more of it.

What is really needed is three or four cameras dotted around the boat, continually beaming back sound and images so that ashore we can really be a fly on the wall, a la Big Brother. But until the satcom technology arrives allowing this to happen and the crews realise they are not only out there to win a yacht race but are just as much characters in a relentless TV show, we cannot see how this situation will change.

And there remains the issue of what happens should the media person’s camera equipment accidently end up beneath the stack just prior to a manoeuvre...

Frostad says he is in negotiation with the teams about the role and limitations of the media person.

“One of the things I’d like to improve this race is the communication between us, the race organisers, and the teams - that is something which isn’t as good as it should have been,” says Frostad, sounding very much like the poacher turned gamekeeper. “The result is when things are not told, stories are made and there is a lot of talking behind the scenes which doesn’t help the event.”

He gives the example of crews typically not knowing where the TV pictures end up – and why should they? “They are focussed on sailing and designing new sails, not about what we are going to put on the net. So first of all we have to educate the sailors about what we are going to use it for and why it is important.” Last week’s conference in Alicante, attended by all the teams, helped he says.

Pressing issues

As to his immediate business Frostad says that he has to get to know the ever increasing Volvo Ocean Race team at their base in Whiteley and to finalise some arrangements with the ports. The race for example is definitely not going to the Middle East now and will go from Cape Town to Kochi, India to Singapore.

Despite the late stage there are also still new teams waiting in the wings trying to find funds to compete and Frostad says he will be trying to help those. “It is something I have been involved with before for my own teams and also with Brasil 1 on that part of the project. So I hope I can be of some help there.”

Frostad says there are still three to five teams still seriously looking for money – the only one of these to have gone public is Tom Weaver’s Carbon Challenge. An America’s Cup team or two are said to still be in the frame. While the opportunity has passed to build new, there is still time – just – to take a secondhand boat modified to V2 of the rule and Ericsson are known to have put ABN AMRO One on the market.

“It would be great to have a secondhand boat in the race,” says Frostad. “It sets some precident for the future - that you can, with a limited budget or with a long perspective, do one race with that kind of boat and then build a new one for the next.”

Having made the bold and ultimately wrong move to get Cup legend Laurie Davidson to design the djuice dragons boats when everyone else had gone to Farr in 2001-2, Frostad is very interested in the present race where each team has a different designer, the boats in theory not ending up like a one design fleet.

But as far as team’s preparations have been concerned, it has been very different. Ericsson and the Spanish have been discreetly working away in house on the development of their boats while Ken Read and his Puma team have spent a huge amount of time racing on board George David’s maxi Rambler. Which approach will pay off?

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