Volvo Ocean Race: Overview, Marketing, History

SHARING IN GLOBAL SUCCESS
The Volvo Ocean Race has shaped the lives of hundreds of the world’s best
sailors and has touched the lives of millions round the world who want to
share the excitement of racing some of the world’s fastest monohull yachts
competing in one of the world’s top sports and the undisputed premier grand
prix of ocean racing.
It is the ultimate blend of world class sporting competition and on the edge
adventure, played out on a track that includes the legendary Cape of Good
Hope, the icy, gale-strewn wastes of the Southern Ocean, and the infamous
Cape Horn.
The players, men and women competing on equal terms, are the stars of a
sport which recognises the importance of the Volvo Ocean Race as an essential
qualification to the development of a first division career.
While many sports can take as little as a fraction of a minute, or just an
afternoon to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race enjoys a build-up stretching over
years and the race itself is played out for nearly eight months on a world stage
taking in the Mediterranean, northern Europe, Africa, Australasia, South and
North America.
RICK TOMLINSON
OVERVIEW 1

2 OVERVIEW
The Volvo Ocean Race, staged every four years since 1973, proudly celebrates
its 30th birthday in September 2003. The origins were not humble, even if they
were embedded in a more Corinthian era. From the beginning, when the
British brewer Whitbread teamed up with the Royal Naval Sailing Association,
this premier round the world race has embraced developments, not just in
yacht design, but also significant advances in communications technology
which brings what is happening in the far flung corners of the oceans to a
growing global audience directly to their homes.
This is a global event, backed by a global company committed to developing
not just a competition, which holds a secure place among the top echelons of
world sport, but to harnessing a secure platform for all the commercial and
corporate benefits which are so important to success in a world where sports
and marketing are closely linked.
RICK TOMLINSON
THIERRY MARTINEZ

Team SEB was a commercial success. We achieved our overall goals. There were very positive opinions from our
customers. We have enjoyed strong support and pride among our employees.
OVERVIEW 3

4 OVERVIEW
WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE
This is a race with worldwide impact. With over 4,000 programmes
generating nearly 1,000 hours of television broadcast time, the Volvo
Ocean Race of 2001-02 took a major step forward when reaching a cumulative
audience of 811 million people. Add to that over 15,000 printed articles in
newspapers and magazines read by 686 million unique readers and the claims
for a truly global audience are well established.
The official web site attracted over 3 million unique visitors in 66 countries, who
visited the site 17.5 million times. The radio audience was estimated at over a
billion listeners as reports were syndicated through some of the best known
distribution networks in the world, including BBC World Service, Voice of
America, and Public Service Radio in the United States.
This is an intelligent, well educated, high income, high spending audience. It is
also a broad-based audience in terms of geography, age, income and
background. Within that, of the sailing enthusiasts, over 40%, are in the AB
socio-economic grouping. On average 60% are male with the majority falling
into the 25 to 54 age group. Salaries are, on average, over USD60,000 a year.
THE SAILING AUDIENCE HAS AN EXCELLENT
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE
UK FRANCE GERMANY SWEDEN USA
SEX MALE 83 81 83 74 83
FEMALE 17 19 17 26 17
AGE 24-34 18 19 17 26 17
35-44 22 22 26 22 26
45-54 24 21 26 26 29
SOCIO
ECONOMIC
A 34 33 12 18 45
GROUP B 18 22 37 24 16
C1 16 19 28 17 9
PERCENTAGE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF SAILING ENTHUSIASTS
ACROSS FIVE KEY TERRITORIES, SHOWING THE EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH
VALUE OF THE SAILING AUDIENCE.
RICHARD MASON/ASSA ABLOY RACING TEAM

In terms of media evaluation, the SMS report showed that Assa Abloy enjoyed the most brand exposure of any
entrant in the race. The value of the media coverage generated amounted to USD57.8 million, trade press excluded.
OVERVIEW 5

6 OVERVIEW
RELIABLE RESEARCH
There were three major research initiatives to monitor who was taking an
interest in the 2001-02 race and their changing attitudes and
perceptions.
To establish a comparative base, there were two pre-race surveys, one of
about 1,500 people picked from those who logged on to the Internet,
designated ‘sailing enthusiasts’ and the second, with the respondents
contacted randomly by telephone, involved 2,400 interviews in France,
Germany, Sweden, the UK and the USA.
Both waves of interviews, pre-race and, in May/June 2002 post-race,
showed a significant increase in awareness about the race, the
competitors, and the business interests of the companies sponsoring
the teams. Across those five key territories, about 39% of the
population was, by the end, aware of the Volvo Ocean Race.
This research was undertaken as an independent means of
checking and evaluating the results of a major sponsorship investment, and
as a service to the participants. It formed the basis of making the decision to
go ahead with the 2005-06 race.
The work was carried out by Sports Marketing Surveys, (SMS) a highly
respected market research house which specialises in the study of sports
events and their audiences. The figures they have generated are the result
of a highly professional piece of work, conducted to the highest industry
standards. Their work is corroborated by research conducted by the
competing teams.
The objective may have been product promotion, brand building,
corporate hospitality, corporate integration, employee team
building or even personnel recruitment.
The Volvo Ocean Race has shown itself to be an effective
platform for any of those tasks, singly or collectively.
RICK TOMLINSON

The Volvo Ocean Race is a unique sporting event and a unique marketing opportunity
that creates unparalleled returns on investment.
OVERVIEW 7

8 OVERVIEW
A HISTORY OF PROGRESS
This is a race with a heritage. When the first race was run in 1973-74 there
was a mix of amateur and professional sailors, many different types of
yacht, and a sense of pioneering adventure. From the start the event was
marbled by drama, courage and humour. It was, and will continue to be,
a great story.
Since then some of the great names of sailing, like Sir Peter Blake and Paul
Cayard, have led highly professional teams to famous wins. The yachts have
developed from all-purpose boats into dedicated racing machines crewed by
multi-national teams bristling with Olympic medal winners and America’s Cup
campaigners. The race has also provided a platform for women. Four times allwomen
crews have competed alongside men in one of the sporting world’s
toughest arenas.
Along the way, new records have been set for monohulls sailing the most miles
in any 24 hour period, whole aspects of yacht design have been improved and
passed on to other areas of the sport. Research into physical endurance and
the prevention of sports injuries has been pushed into new fields.
The teams are now made up of finely tuned professionals, racing their yachts
24 hours a day through conditions which swing from being frustrating and
tactically testing, to being vicious and physically demanding. Every kind of skill
is needed to combat not only the conditions but the competition pitted against
them. To win the Volvo Ocean Race you need to be an all-round team of
specialists and experts, including those who manage and maintain the boats
and provide logistics support ashore.
Now the Volvo Ocean Race is embarking on a new era. A new class of yacht,
longer, faster, but designed to be more economical to campaign, has been
chosen for the 2005-06 race. The course has been modified to make it slightly
shorter in time terms, and more varied with the inclusion of mid-stage points
scoring. It will be brought closer to the public with pit stops and inshore races
at every stopover the weekend prior to the fleet being sent off on its next ocean
leg. That also means more opportunities of establishing diary dates when
teams can invite supporters or commercial guests to watch them do what they
do best – race big, powerful yachts in close combat. And, at sea,
communications will be further improved as each yacht will have a dedicated
area for transmitting video, audio and stills images.
It is a compelling and fascinating study in human endeavour, one which is
paralleled in the commercial world and the sponsorship initiatives it inspires.
The history of the Volvo Ocean Race is still in the making.
PPL, OWEN CLARKE DESIGN

CONTENTS
2 INTRODUCTION
8 AUDIENCE PROFILE
12 MEDIA STATISTICS
24 MEDIA IMPACT
30 MEDIA VALUE
36 MEDIA STRATEGY
40 YACHT SPONSORSHIP
42 TEAM EF CASE STUDY
50 TEAM SEB CASE STUDY
56 ASSA ABLOY RACING TEAM CASE STUDY
62 CONCLUSION
DANIEL FORSTER, THIERRY MARTINEZ, CARLO BORLENGHI, OSKAR KIHLBORG, AMER SPORTS TOO
INTRODUCTION 1

2 INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
What is the Volvo Ocean Race? A sensible answer to that question might
be: “It depends who you ask”. Volvo has spent three years asking
various groups of people for an answer to this question to help them, and the
other companies supporting this event, assess the success of the event as a
means of communicating their brand to a large and very valuable audience.
The results are set out here. They are perhaps more emphatically reinforced by
another fact: renewed Volvo backing for future Volvo Ocean Races and greater
investment in the wider sport of sailing, both at grassroots and professional
levels.
To a rapidly expanding, high quality audience of followers, the Volvo Ocean
Race encapsulates all the competition, drama, excitement, endeavour,
endurance and excellence of modern sport. It is the ultimate sporting contest;
a complete test of athletes at the top of their sport: a test of physical and
mental prowess, but also one of courage, stamina and endurance. It is the
pinnacle of ocean racing. A sport that, because of the endeavours of the late
Sir Peter Blake, Paul Cayard, John Kostecki and Ellen McArthur, coupled with
improvements in communications technology, brings us the action from their
yachts, is seeing new and unprecedented levels of interest.
To over 125 companies that have participated in the race since 1973, the Volvo
Ocean Race is something else as well. It constitutes a sophisticated marketing
tool with unique qualities that differentiate it from other elements in the
communications mix. It is a multi-million dollar investment, delivering
large numbers of viewers within a very focussed and very valuable
demographic band, a way of adding immense value to a brand proposition, a
means of creating a unique personality for a company or brand, a cause to
encourage company pride and foster employee loyalty, a high profile way of
attracting and retaining staff, a solution for consolidating global offices behind
a single unifying cause, and a unique opportunity for doing business
with clients.
Volvo recognises that the success of the race depends upon maximising
opportunities for the sponsors involved. An independent organisation has
been established to administer the race for the benefit of the teams, their
sponsors and the many race partners. Association with a quality marque’s
marketing of a premier sport is one obvious benefit to other sponsors
and Volvo is again committed to using the race as a central part of its
global marketing.

GUIDO CANTINI
INTRODUCTION 3

OSKAR KIHLBORG
4 INTRODUCTION
VOLVO – SPONSORING THE WORLD’S PREMIER
OCEAN RACE
Like any company approaching a multi-million dollar marketing campaign,
Volvo had specific objectives and a clear idea of how the company wanted to
achieve them. Their reliance on top quality, objective research has typified their
approach to their sponsorship and shown a determination to ensure that it was
entered into for defined and measurable reasons and that the results were
specific and quantifiable.
Having decided that they wanted to embark on a major sports sponsorship,
Volvo commissioned Sports Marketing Surveys (‘SMS’) to conduct the
quantitative and qualitative research to support their marketing strategy. The
research, which is set out in detail in this document, looked first at the
demographics of the sailing audience and compared it with Volvo’s own target
market. Having established a close fit, they looked at the public perception of
the race and matched that with existing perceptions of the Volvo brand and the
values Volvo was seeking to strengthen its brand proposition. Further initial
work involved looking at the potential of the race to reach that audience

through existing media coverage. Taken together, the Volvo Ocean Race
started to take shape as the right vehicle for marketing the Volvo brand.
Benchmarking exercises demonstrated baseline awareness of the race from
which Volvo would later be able to measure the success of their media and
communications strategies. One of the key decisions taken by the Volvo Ocean
Race organisation was to have a media strategy based on bringing the event
to a wider audience, whilst ensuring quality coverage was provided to the
established sailing audience. To establish a wider audience, Volvo focussed on
news programming in TV, radio, print and Internet whilst dedicated sailing
programmes, predominantly on terrestrial, free-to-air channels ensured large,
quality audiences.
SMS conducted research for Volvo, both during and after the race, across 11
monitored markets. It focussed on five key markets (UK, France, Germany,
Sweden and the USA) monitoring media and conducting interviews with
audiences recruited via the Internet and random interviews on the telephone.
Their findings emphatically supported Volvo’s media and communications
strategy and the investment they made in the event.
RICK TOMLINSON
INTRODUCTION 5

GUIDO CANTINI
6 INTRODUCTION
THE FINDINGS – AN ENORMOUS MEDIA EVENT
In media terms, the 2001-02 Volvo Ocean Race was an enormous event. Media
coverage was a huge success, reaching a far wider and larger audience than its
predecessor. Over 4,000 television programmes were broadcast, creating
nearly 1,000 hours of television coverage. This programming produced
cumulative audiences of over 800 million viewers and 92 million total viewer
hours, placing the event firmly in the pantheon of top international sporting
events, with figures in excess of Tennis ATP Masters, US Masters Golf and even
Super Bowl.
Printed media coverage consisted of over 15,000 published articles, creating in
excess of 686 million unique readers, with Germany, Sweden, the UK, the USA
and France accounting for over 77% of the cuttings in high quality titles.
The official race website received over 3 million unique visitors who visited the
site 17.5 million times. Viewers from 66 countries spent an average of nine
minutes on the site per visit.
Using a British-based production house to provide radio coverage of the whole

ace, it is estimated that more than a billion listeners tuned in to listen to race
coverage.
THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION – MEASURING
SUCCESS IN FINANCIAL TERMS
How do you quantify a sponsorship campaign in financial terms to find a
concrete measure of return on investment?
For Volvo, the equivalent media value of the brand exposure achieved
provided ample justification for their investment before the company even
started to think about the demonstrably improved brand image amongst its
key audiences. The exposure for the Volvo and Volvo Ocean Race brands had
an equivalent value of almost USD105 million.
For Volvo and other sponsors involved in the race, the quality of the audience
was of major importance. Research showed that almost 37% of those aware of
the Volvo Ocean Race were categorised by the ABC1 socio-economic
grouping.
For the teams illbruck, Assa Abloy, Nautor Challenge and SEB, equivalent
media values of an average of nearly USD50 million returned between 200-
300% on their investment. To these companies, this was only one factor
amongst a number of others when weighing up the success of the sponsorship.
Sponsorship of a team in the race was seen as a mechanism for delivering not
just external benefits but, more importantly, as a means of delivering benefits
for the organisation internally, helping motivate and inspire staff, as well as
driving sales with customers through unique hospitality and relationship
marketing opportunities as the race toured the world.
The success of these objectives is best examined in context and this document
deals later with three case studies of past sponsors for whom external publicity
has been only one of a number of objectives.
RICK TOMLINSON
INTRODUCTION 7

8 AUDIENCE PROFILE
AUDIENCE PROFILE
LOOKING AT THE AUDIENCE – WHO FOLLOWS
SAILING?
The sailing audience is a well defined, highly valuable and tightly focussed
demographic of wealthier, well-educated people. It is most conveniently split
into two groups: ‘Sailing Enthusiasts’ and ‘People Interested in Sailing’. Sailing
Enthusiasts are taken to be people who participate in sailing and who are
regular followers of the race through the website. The other group, People
Interested in Sailing, speaks for itself.
We have looked at Sailing Enthusiasts across five key markets: UK, France,
Germany, Sweden and the USA. People Interested in Sailing are profiled in the
UK only. We have profiled this latter group in much more detail and assume
that it is fairly representative of the parallel groups in other major markets.
TARGET AUDIENCE 1: THE ‘SAILING ENTHUSIAST’
The Sailing Enthusiast is characterised as a high-income, predominantly male
audience with higher than average representation amongst the senior
THE SAILING AUDIENCE HAS AN EXCELLENT
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE
UK FRANCE GERMANY SWEDEN USA
SEX MALE 83 81 83 74 83
FEMALE 17 19 17 26 17
AGE 24-34 18 19 17 26 17
35-44 22 22 26 22 26
45-54 24 21 26 26 29
SOCIO
ECONOMIC
A 34 33 12 18 45
GROUP B 18 22 37 24 16
C1 16 19 28 17 9
PERCENTAGE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF SAILING ENTHUSIASTS
ACROSS FIVE KEY TERRITORIES, SHOWING THE EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH
VALUE OF THE SAILING AUDIENCE.

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE REACHES HIGH VALUE
CUSTOMER GROUPS
% of respondents
59.5
Mercedes-Benz
Saab
56.0
54.8
BMW
Volvo
51.5
46.2 45.5
Volkswagen
Peugeot
40.7
Audi
36.1 35.7
THE AWARENESS OF THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE IN 5 KEY COUNTRIES AS A
FUNCTION OF CAR DRIVEN BY THE RESPONDENT, CONFIRMING THAT PEOPLE
FOLLOWING THE RACE HAVE A SIGNIFICANT DISPOSABLE INCOME.
Opel
Ford
Renault
33.3
Toyota
28.0
Citroën
21.1
Nissan
15.0
management and professional sectors. Looking across the five key markets, the
Sailing Enthusiast is, on average, over 40% in the AB socio-economic
groupings. In Sweden and Germany, sailing is more accessible to people in the
C1 socio-economic groupings, whereas the USA has the highest percentage of
people in the A socio-economic grouping, with almost half of Sailing
Enthusiasts in the USA coming from this group.
Across the key territories, 80% of Sailing Enthusiasts were male with a high
concentration of respondents falling into the 25-54 age range. Across the UK,
France, Germany and the USA this data is very consistent in terms of gender of
enthusiasts. The exception is Sweden, which has a higher percentage of female
Sailing Enthusiasts.
With this age and socio-economic profile, it is no surprise to discover that the
Sailing Enthusiast is wealthier than average, with salaries of over USD60,000.
Research through the Volvo Ocean Race website demonstrates that the
distribution of occupations amongst Sailing Enthusiasts is weighted towards
senior management and professional positions.
AUDIENCE PROFILE 9

10 AUDIENCE PROFILE
A large amount of data has been collected from the Volvo Ocean Race website,
where users were surveyed by SMS in order to gain some insights into the
dedicated follower’s lifestyle.
Apart from sailing, Sailing Enthusiasts follow a range of sport in the media. For
the most part, they follow ‘fast sports’ such as Formula 1 and motor racing, as
well as football. Those interviewed also participated in non-competitive
outdoor sports such as jogging and mountaineering; golf and tennis were also
well represented.
As one might expect from an audience with significant disposable income, a
high proportion of the target audience drive luxury cars.
Our Internet research indicates that the audience is tuned into modern
technologies. 91% of respondents are mobile phone owners and over 14% of
them were WAP subscribers. Across Europe, 74% of respondents have satellite
TV at home; this represents a considerably higher proportion than the research
agency’s 50% of the representative sample group as a whole.
Sailing Enthusiasts are heavy users of the Internet, with well over 50% visiting
the Volvo Ocean Race website at least once a day. This compares with a
representative sample of Internet users, amongst whom intent usage is far
lower, with most visiting a website on a weekly rather than daily basis.
TARGET AUDIENCE 2: ‘PEOPLE INTERESTED IN
SAILING’
‘People Interested in Sailing’ is a larger group of predominantly ABC1 socioeconomic
grouping, well-educated with high disposable incomes. In the UK
they are more likely to be based in London and the south of England.
In terms of the gender split, it is interesting to note that People Interested in
Sailing are more evenly distributed between the genders. Nearly 40% of
women make up this group as compared with only 17% of women who class
themselves as Sailing Enthusiasts.
The age of People Interested in Sailing is more evenly spread, with greater
representation in the 15-24 age group than the Sailing Enthusiast – suggesting
a slightly younger audience.

‘INTERESTED IN’ OR A ‘SAILING ENTHUSIAST’,
THE DEMOGRAPHICS ARE IMPRESSIVE
PEOPLE INTERESTED IN SAILING SAILING ENTHUSIASTS
SEX MALE 61 83
FEMALE 39 17
AGE 15-24 17 10
25-34 16 18
35-44 19 22
45-54 20 24
SOCIO
ECONOMIC
A 6 34
GROUP B 32 18
C1 29 11
TABLE SHOWING THE DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE TWO KEY
SAILING AUDIENCES.
People Interested in Sailing are well educated, with almost twice the average
leaving education at 21 or older.
They are more likely to be married or getting married, but are slightly less likely
than the average to have children. This perhaps correlates with the fact that this
group is more likely to come from a double income household, where average
household income is almost twice as likely to exceed USD53,000.
80% own or are in the process of buying their own houses and 52% have a
mortgage.
In terms of lifestyle, a snapshot of People Interested in Sailing shows that they
read the financial pages of the newspaper and take a personal interest in
investments, are prepared to pay a little more for environmentally friendly
products, exercise at least once a week, wear designer clothes, are prepared to
pay more for luxury products, are interested in home improvements and prefer
to take holidays off the beaten track.
AUDIENCE PROFILE 11

12 MEDIA STATISTICS
MEDIA STATISTICS
In the run up to the 2001-02 Volvo Ocean Race, Volvo put in place a media
strategy to implement its objective of bringing the race to a wider audience
than ever before. In order to make an independent assessment of this strategy,
monitoring work was commissioned by Volvo before, during and after
the race.
This research clearly established that the media strategy achieved this
objective, with unprecedented levels of awareness of the race amongst 39%
of the population across the five key territories surveyed. The results of that
assessment are set out here.
Lessons learned from the implementation of this strategy are feeding into the
strategy for the 2005-06 race and will yield even greater results (refer to the
Media Strategy for 2005-06 on pages 36-39).
ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL
SPORTING EVENTS
Key to fulfilling the media plan was the creation of a news-oriented media
strategy. This strategy proved highly successful in reaching a new and broader
audience through television, radio, print and website activities. With the
ongoing fragmentation of media outlets, it was essential that the race was seen
alongside other major events to build on its position as sailing’s premier ocean
race and maintain its position as one of the world’s most successful global
sporting events.
The race was run over nine months. The duration of the event provided unique
opportunities for prolonged coverage and unique challenges to sustain toplevel
coverage over this period. To succeed on a global level, the media team
had to ensure that its operation was able to perform at a local level. This meant
close coordination between the sophisticated media centre at race
headquarters and the yacht crew, but also with international and local media at
each of the nine stopover ports.

PATRICK ANDERSON, RICK TOMLINSON
MEDIA STATISTICS 13

14 MEDIA STATISTICS
TELEVISION
Over the nine months of the Volvo Ocean Race, television coverage in 11
monitored territories (Germany, USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France,
Norway, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa and Denmark), and of dedicated
programmes outside these territories, amounted to 996 hours and 34 minutes.
There were 4,152 items on television split between dedicated programmes,
coverage in existing sports programmes, and news reports. The total
cumulative audience was just over 811 million viewers who generated total
viewer hours of a little over 92 million hours.
TWO PILLARS OF THE MEDIA STRATEGY – NEWS AND
DEDICATED PROGRAMMING
The media strategy involved ensuring that a quality news feed was always
available to more than 350 news broadcasters worldwide. Whilst this policy
ensured a platform for broadening the audience demographic and mass (refer
to News Coverage on page 16), the focus on creating dedicated race
programming for a large number of free to air terrestrial stations around the
world added immense strength to the coverage. Through its television partner,
Granada Sport, the media service was flexible in its approach. Whilst focussing
on dedicated programmes covering on the water action and stopover reviews,
General Sports
THE FOCUS ON NEWS PROGRAMMING CREATED
A WIDESPREAD AWARENESS OF THE RACE
Dedicated
13%
71%
News
10%
TOTAL VIEWER HOURS BY
PROGRAMME TYPE
News
6%
15%
General Sports
23%
56%
6%
Dedicated Repeat
Dedicated
Dedicated Repeat
GRAPH SHOWING THE SPLIT
OF CUMULATIVE AUDIENCE BY
TYPE OF PROGRAMME. THE
NEWS AND GENERAL SPORTS
PROGRAMMES ARE
IMPORTANT IN CREATING A
BROAD AWARENESS OF THE
RACE, WHILE THE DEDICATED
PROGRAMMING EDUCATES
THE AUDIENCE ABOUT THE
RACE AND ITS PARTICIPANTS.
DEDICATED PROGRAMMES
PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN
EDUCATING THE AUDIENCE
AND CREATING GENUINE
KNOWLEDGE OF THE RACE
AND ITS PARTICIPANTS.

even where whole programmes were not placed, material was supplied for
sports programmes to be shown alongside other major events.
DEDICATED PROGRAMMING
The overall results show that dedicated programmes were significantly greater
in number and ratings than the previous race (broadcasts were shown in over
50 countries as compared with 27 in the 1997-98 event).
The ratings were boosted by the decision to focus on quality slots on free to air
terrestrial channels, adding significant value to the sponsors.
The UK, Sweden and Norway saw the highest levels of dedicated coverage. In
Norway weekly and monthly race highlights were shown on popular terrestrial
channels TV1 and TV2. In the UK, the Saturday weekly highlight programme
attracted a 40% market share whilst in Sweden 47 hours of dedicated coverage
with regular repeats of weekly highlight programmes were broadcast.
565 hours of dedicated footage – over 1,000 programmes – was broadcast in
markets as diverse as Canada, Japan, Italy, Thailand, Spain, Argentina, Austria
and Finland.
PHOTODISC
MEDIA STATISTICS 15

16 MEDIA STATISTICS
NEWS COVERAGE
News, naturally, is story and event-led. The judicious management and release
of news stories greatly assisted in ensuring relatively even coverage of the
Volvo Ocean Race over the nine months of the event, as can be seen from the
table opposite. Quality news feeds rely on capturing and transmitting footage
close to the event – the ability of modern Volvo Ocean Race yachts to do this
even from deep in the Southern Ocean has enhanced this significantly. News
footage was obtained from the yachts and aerial sorties by Volvo Ocean Race
film crews and this dramatic footage was key in creating successful coverage.
News was distributed through the EBU, Reuters and SNTV alongside the feed
available from BT tower.
Germany was the clear leader in terms of news features broadcast with 841
news features on premium channels in peak time slots, attracting high
audiences. These broadcasts accounted for 95% of coverage of the Volvo
Ocean Race in this country. Whereas in Germany they were spread evenly
throughout the race, in the USA most of the 338 news broadcasts were
concentrated around the times when the race was near American ports, with
FREE TO AIR BROADCAST DELIVERS
BETTER RESULTS
CHANNEL BROADCAST AUDIENCE VOR EXPOSURE VALUE
TIME (MINS:SECS) (USD)
ITV SATURDAY 14.00 928,000 04.21 96,885
ITV DIGITAL SUNDAY 16.00 1,000 04.16 102
COMPARISON BETWEEN THESE TWO BROADCASTS OF SIMILAR LENGTH
CLEARLY SUPPORTS THE DECISION TO PURSUE FREE TO AIR BROADCAST IN
ORDER TO MAXIMISE QUALITY AUDIENCE FIGURES.
IMPRESSIVE TV COVERAGE ALL OVER
THE WORLD
COUNTRY COVERAGE NO OF CUMULATIVE TOTAL VIEWER
(HH:MM) PROGRAMMES AUDIENCE HOURS
NORWAY 49:27 178 22,969,100 4,262,965
SWEDEN 48:32 212 72,028,300 19,027,89
GERMANY 40:39 889 273,960,600 9,232,312
DENMARK 36:34 92 6,246,100 2,114,025
UK 34:21 228 86,793,513 10,807,253
FRANCE 22:13 297 86,349,700 5,695,813
USA 19:35 360 79,609,098 5,100,485
AUSTRALIA 17:22 141 11,840,700 561,052
NEW ZEALAND 10:16 86 9,624,300 827,264
BRAZIL 02:49 57 85,336,935 2,510,898
SOUTH AFRICA 00:50 23 3,985,000 86,660
OTHER 565:05 1,290 65,128,998 29,095,387
PAN AFRICA 148:45 299 7,237,200 2,782,045
GRAND TOTAL 996:34 4,152 811,109,544 92,103,348
THE TABLE SHOWS THE KEY STATISTICS OF THE TV COVERAGE AND ITS
GEOGRAPHICAL SPREAD. NEWS AND GENERAL SPORTS WERE MONITORED IN
11 COUNTRIES, WHILE DEDICATED PROGRAMMES WERE MONITORED
WORLDWIDE.

16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
MEDIA RESPONSE TO EVENTS IN THE
VOLVO OCEAN RACE
Cumulative Number of Press Articles
(Thousands)
Press: No. of articles
TV: News audience
SYDNEY TO AUCKLAND
LEG HAS A MASSIVE IMPACT
ON PRESS AND TV
RACE BEGINS
23rd SEPTEMBER
Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
ANNAPOLIS-LA ROCHELLE
LEG GENERATES HUGE INTEREST
AS THE BOATS RETURN TO
EUROPEAN SHORES
ARRIVAL IN SYDNEY
DRAWS LARGE TV
NEWS AUDIENCES
Month
SHARP RISE IN TV NEWS
AUDIENCES AS FLEET
REACHES BRAZIL
01/09/01
THE STRONG DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE CONTINUED
THROUGHOUT THE RACE, WITH PEAKS AROUND SPECIAL EVENTS AND WHEN
THE FLEET APPROACHED DENSELY POPULATED AREAS, LIKE THE US, BRAZIL
AND EUROPE.
Cumulative TV News Audience
(Millions)
RACE ENDS
9th JUNE
TV NEWS AUDIENCE
CLIMBS DRAMATICALLY WHEN
THE FLEET REACHES
THE USA
Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
258 or 76% of news features broadcast during this time. This coverage
contributed to huge increase in overall awareness of the race in the USA –
jumping from 7.1% to 25.1% of the population.
Many of the events that contribute to the drama of the Volvo Ocean Race are
unpredictable, such as coverage of the illbruck flooding, Tyco’s rudder damage,
Amer Sport One’s Keith Kilpatrick’s dramatic medivac and SEB’s dismasting.
Some, however, are manageable – such as the fleet’s participation in the
Sydney to Hobart Race. The introduction of new point scoring gates in key midleg
and significant geographical locations during the next race will further
encourage ‘spikes’ of interest. The drama of the ‘in-port’ racing will also add to
the news value of the race at times where there has traditionally been a drop
in interest (refer to the Media Strategy for 2005-06 on pages 36-39).
MEDIA STATISTICS 17

18 MEDIA STATISTICS
TOTAL COVERAGE BY REGION
Germany was the highest rating territory in terms of cumulative media
coverage, reaching a cumulative audience of almost 274 million people. This
was an excellent example of the strength of the news strategy, where a
cumulative audience of 264 million people was reached through 841 reports.
The UK finished as the second highest territory, partly because of its long
association with the event and, despite having no entry carrying its national
flag, with an audience figure of 86,793,513. There was a dedicated programme
shown on ITV that reached an audience of 10,434,900, however the news
coverage again showed up the highest ratings.
France ended the race as the third highest market with cumulative audience
figures of 86,349,700. But, in this case, it was the general sports programmes
that produced the best ratings of 55,313,000, with the inclusion of Volvo Ocean
Race-generated footage within their broadcasts.
Brazil accounted for an audience figure of 85,336,935 from general sports
USA
Brazil
COVERAGE IN IMPORTANT MARKETS AROUND
THE WORLD
10%
11%
Sweden
France
9%
11%
Other
8%
11%
UK
Norway
3%
THE CHART SHOWS THE CUMULATIVE TV AUDIENCE BY COUNTRY.
Australia 1%
New Zealand 1%
Pan Africa 1%
Denmark 1%
South Africa 0.5%
33%
Germany

programme coverage and news. With two stopovers in the United States, the
cumulative audience figure of 79,609,098 was dominated by news coverage,
338 reports adding up to 10 hours watched by a cumulative audience of
72,080,918, but the bulk of this was attained when the fleet was in that country.
Dedicated programmes reached an audience of 6,975,780 during an hour-long
programme scheduled for nationwide screening.
Sweden enjoyed great success with its dedicated programming. The time slot
for this moved from 22.30 on a Friday night to 19.30 and the programme
achieved a cumulative audience of 43,552,300 (including the repeat). This
compared with 100 news reports in the same country, seen by a cumulative
audience of 28, 036,000.
PRINTED MEDIA
Although not all territories were monitored, 15,264 cuttings were accumulated
from publications with a cumulative circulation of 246,554,434 reaching a
readership of 686 million unique readers.
Germany was the highest scoring territory, accounting for 29% of the cuttings
gathered, followed by Sweden with 18% and the UK with 16%, though UK
newspapers accounted for four of the top six publications in terms of numbers
of articles.
The Volvo Ocean Race featured in 1,526 headlines and the winning syndicate,
illbruck, featured in 1,801 headlines. As with television, a strong news element
gave rise to peak interest. The Sydney to Hobart race alone accounted for 17%
of the cuttings monitored. The number of cuttings rose markedly in each of the
countries where and when stopovers took place.
But there was strong coverage around the world in the major print media and
the cumulative circulation of publications featuring the Volvo Ocean Race was,
as mentioned, 246,554,434 with a total readership of 686 million.
The ability to download free of charge pictures from the Volvo Ocean Race online
archive was exercised by just over 1,500 picture desks, enhancing exposure
in newspapers, magazines and other websites. In addition, the race
organisation had an agreement with Reuters to distribute the images to over
MEDIA STATISTICS 19

CARLO BORLENGHI
20 MEDIA STATISTICS
10,000 clients. Over 2,500 high resolution images were downloaded and over
6,000 low resolution images.
ON THE WORLDWIDE WEB
www.VolvoOceanRace.org, the official event website, received over three
million unique visitors, visiting the site 17.5 million times, spending an average
of 9.26 minutes on the site each time, and generating 102.3 million page views
from 1 September 2001 to 30 June 2002.
The website was designed to provide comprehensive coverage. Using editorial
generated both at the race stopovers and centrally, e-mails and articles
supplied from the yachts and their syndicate managements, position updates
and results, data analysis, video, audio and still images, it offered a
comprehensive menu of information and archive.
The number of unique visitors peaked at 93,169 in the final 24 hours of the
race. The fact that the highest audience figures were reached in the final stages

WWW.VOLVOOCEANRACE.ORG:
A TOP 100 WEB SITE
VOLVOOCEANRACE.ORG TO 1 JULY 2002
UNIQUE VISITORS 3.05 MILLION
PAGES VIEWED TOTAL 102,379,494
PAGES VIEWED AVERAGE PER DAY 349,418
VISITS TOTAL 17.5 MILLION
AVERAGE DAILY VISITS 59,902
AVERAGE VISIT LENGTH 9.26 MINUTES
HIGHEST NUMBER OF UNIQUE VISITORS 93,169*
HIGHEST HITS 23 MILLION**
TOTAL HITS 1,669,729,414
* 9 JUNE – FINISH IN KIEL ** 29 MAY 2002 – END OF LEG 8 TO GÖTEBORG
REACHING OVER 3 MILLION UNIQUE VISITORS DURING 9 MONTHS, THE
RACE SITE IS ONE OF THE TOP 100 SITES IN THE WORLD. THE AVERAGE TIME
SPENT ON THE SITE PER VISIT IS ONE EXPLANATION WHY THE FOLLOWERS
OF THE RACE GET AN IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE OF THE PARTICIPANTS AND
THEIR SPONSORS.
SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF ARTICLES IN MANY MAJOR
PUBLICATIONS
NAME COUNTRY CIRCULATION READERSHIP NO OF ARTICLES
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC USA 8,618,,632 34,474,528 3
THE SUN UK 3,628,097 9,859,000 5
DAILY MAIL UK 2,389,489 5,973,723 8
USA TODAY (USA EDITION) USA 2,149,933 5,374,833 23
NEW YORK TIMES USA 1,698,288 4,245,703 41
BILD (UBERREGIONAL) GERMANY 1,648,853 4,122,133 87
THE SUNDAY TIMES UK 1,356,010 3,390,025 30
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH UK 1,026,634 2,566,585 194
THE TIMES UK 721,505 1,803,763 172
DAILY TELEGRAPH AUSTRALIA 414,000 1,035,000 126
HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT GERMANY 384,080 960,200 92
AFTONBLADET SWEDEN 381,600 954,000 92
DAGENS NYHETER SWEDEN 361,100 902,750 126
GÖTEBORG POSTEN SWEDEN 260,400 651,000 185
THE INDEPENDENT UK 227,519 568,798 160
KOLNER STADT-ANZEIGER GERMANY 212,305 530,762 99
SVENSKA DAGBLADET SWEDEN 178,100 445,250 121
KIELER NACHRICTEN GERMANY 171,658 429,145 192
FLENSBURGER TAGEBLATT GERMANY 169,760 424,400 103
KOLNISCHE RUNDSHAU GERMANY 150,060 375,150 89
HAMBURGER MORGENPOST GERMANY 118,392 295,980 79
LUBECKER NACHRICHTEN GERMANY 111,868 279,670 107
YACHT GERMANY 68,999 275,996 95
SEGLER ZEITUNG GERMANY 19,800 79,200 85
SEGEBERGER ZEITUNG GERMANY 14,141 35,428 79
RANKED BY READERSHIP THIS CHART SHOWS THAT THE RACE FREQUENTLY
APPEARED IN SOME MAJOR PUBLICATIONS AROUND THE WORLD.
MEDIA STATISTICS 21

22 MEDIA STATISTICS
of the race demonstrated that the audience was engaged right to the end. The
audience was about 87% male, with 33% of them being between the ages of
24 and 34, 28% between 35 and 44. Of the registrants, annual income was, on
average, USD60,000.
Over the lifetime of the event, users from 66 countries were registered with the
top 10 countries being: United States, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands,
Germany, UK, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand and Finland.
The most popular areas of the site were the home page and the position report
page followed by news, image galleries, and boat e-mails.
RADIO
For the first time, the Volvo Ocean Race made arrangements with The
Broadcasting Company, a British-based production house, to provide radio
coverage of the whole race and to have a radio reporter at each of the
stopovers. This strategy was successful and material was distributed worldwide
through both the BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Public Service
Radio in the United States. Additionally, radio broadcast material could both be
heard on the website and picked up from the website by other radio stations.
By the end of the event, it is estimated that more than one billion listeners had
been reached on stations around the world. Unlike press, television and
internet coverage, there is no monitoring service for radio, so these figures only
cover the reports specifically generated and do not include coverage from the
various radio stations in different markets which visited the stopovers
themselves to do reports.
They do not include the many stations, particularly in the United States, using
audio taken from the website, nor the reports filed to BBC World Service
and Voice of America which were then syndicated to hundreds of stations
round the world.

RICK TOMLINSON
MEDIA STATISTICS 23

24 MEDIA IMPACT
MEDIA IMPACT
The Volvo Ocean Race has certain unique qualities that contribute to some
remarkable results in relation to the impact of brand sponsorship of the
event as a whole.
Firstly, the race lasts eight months but with sponsors committing to projects up
to two years in advance and then conducting post-race publicity and hospitality
with their yachts, it creates a wide variety of opportunities for prolonged brand
exposure across a number of major markets. Secondly, during this time the race
visits as many as nine major markets and, coupled with the ability to place
multinational crews on the yachts, according to promotional needs, creates
considerable opportunities for brand penetration in a large number of markets.
Thirdly, ocean yacht racing creates strong values and emotive visual imagery
which, when coupled with creative branding of the yachts, makes lasting
impressions on the audience. Lastly, the people who take an interest in yachting
(refer to Audience Profile on pages 8-11) are a high-quality, well-educated and
intelligent audience who not only show remarkable recall of participating
sponsors, but also surprising levels of awareness of the sponsor’s business and
genuine knowledge of their business.
This section deals with what this equates to for the sponsors in qualitative
terms. It examines, for example, how 39% of the population across five key
territories and 95% of Swedes are aware of the race, how awareness of
sponsors of the top two teams had risen by over 30 percentage points in these
territories, and how understanding of their business stood at levels of up to
84% amongst people following the race.
Of course, brand value and awareness are only two of a number of reasons for
which companies enter into partnership with teams in the Volvo Ocean Race.
Other commercial rationales, such as integrating local companies behind a
global cause, generating staff motivation and pride, strengthening customer
relationships through hospitality opportunities and showcasing products, are all
equally important (refer to Yacht Sponsorship in the Volvo Ocean Race on
pages 40-41).
PERCEPTION OF THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE
One of the key factors for any sponsor seeking to promote their brand, either
to external markets or internal markets, is the way in which the event with which
they are associated is viewed. For Volvo, the race values were very important.

% of respondents
90
72
54
36
18
0
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE COMMUNICATES
COMPELLING VALUES
80.3
73.6 73.4
65.0 64.2
60.0
55.7
49.3
47.5
45.1 44.7 43.1
39.6
37.6
Adventurous
Performance
Global
Exciting
Prestigious
Technically
innovative
Elitist
Attractive
Pleasure
Inspirational
Emotional
Glamorous
Safe
Boring
Dynamic
Environmentally
friendly
THIS BAR CHART SHOWS THE WORDS RESPONDENTS CONSIDER MOST
SUITABLE TO DESCRIBE THE VALUES AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE RACE.
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE COMPARED WITH
OTHER SAILING EVENTS
% OF RESPONDENTS
VOLVO OCEAN RACE 17.7
AMERICA’S CUP 8.3
VENDEE GLOBE 7.6
ROUTE DU RHUM 5.5
THE RACE 2.1
BT GLOBAL CHALLENGE 1.1
18.3 16.3
UNPROMPTED
AWARENESS OF THE
VOLVO OCEAN RACE
COMPARED WITH
OTHER SAILING EVENTS
IN JUNE 2002 AMONG A
RANDOM SAMPLE OF
THE POPULATION IN
GERMANY, THE UK,
FRANCE, SWEDEN AND
THE USA.
Public perception of the race, was therefore researched after the race.
As one might expect, the race was viewed as “adventurous”, “dynamic” and
“exciting” whilst at the same time “technically innovative” and “prestigious”.
AWARENESS OF THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE
Volvo took ownership of The Whitbread Round The World Race for the first
time in 2001-02 having been the principle trophy sponsor in the 1997-98 race.
Their objectives were twofold: to make people aware of the change in
ownership and transfer the positive attributes of the previous race to the Volvo
Ocean Race. Beyond this, they wanted to take the Volvo Ocean Race to a
broader audience than ever before. The research they conducted
demonstrates that they succeeded on both counts.
In terms of overall awareness, the Volvo Ocean Race (including its previous
guise, The Whitbread Round The World Race) has reached almost 39% of the
population in the five key territories researched.
MEDIA IMPACT 25

26 MEDIA IMPACT
There has been a significant increase in awareness of the race and of
sponsorships associated with the race. Across the five key territories monitored,
an estimated 17.7% of the population showed unprompted awareness of either
the Volvo Ocean Race or The Whitbread Round The World Race.
As research indicates that only 6.5% of the populations in these territories
participate in sailing, the fact that almost 39% of that population is aware of the
Volvo Ocean Race is a strong endorsement of the media and marketing
strategy.
When compared with other ocean races, the figures show that a random
section of the population is now more likely to have heard of the Volvo Ocean
Race than any other ocean race.
Whilst overall awareness is, as one might expect, highest in Sweden at 95%, the
largest percentage growth in awareness was in the USA, where unprompted
awareness rose by 18 percentage points.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
STRONG INCREASE OF OVERALL AWARENESS
WAS BUILT DURING THE RACE
% of respondents
23.9
38.6
78.4
95.0
54.5
57.2
29.2
35.3
7.1
Wave 1 Wave 2
25.1
10.1
Overall Sweden UK Germany USA France
BAR CHART SHOWING THE INCREASED AWARENESS OF THE VOLVO OCEAN
RACE DURING THE RACE. FIRST SURVEY MADE AT THE START OF THE RACE IN
SEPTEMBER 2001 AND THE SECOND AT THE END OF THE RACE IN JUNE 2002.
14.6

45
36
27
18
9
0
STRONG INCREASE OF THE AWARENESS OF THE TEAMS
AND THEIR SPONSORS
% of respondents
15.6
43.2
Illbruck
Challenge
12.0
40.3
Assa Abloy
Racing
Team
13.8
Team
SEB
37.2
14.0
25.7
Nautor
Challenge/
Amer Sports
24.5
THE AWARENESS OF THE SYNDICATES, MEASURED AT THE START AND AT
THE END OF THE RACE AMONG THOSE AWARE OF THE RACE, SHOWS AN
IMPRESSIVE INCREASE.
7.1
9.8
Wave 1 Wave 2
23.3
10.9
20.2
Team Tyco News Corp Djuice
Dragons
The research also revealed that the demographic profile of the people aware
of the Volvo Ocean Race is impressive, making this a valuable audience for
companies associating with the Volvo Ocean Race. 36.9% of people aware of
the race in the five key territories are in the ABC1 socio-economic group.
The quality of the audience is some explanation of the excellent awareness
levels of the business of each of the companies taking part in the Volvo Ocean
Race. Effective communication of brand through design on the yachts coupled
with the use of comprehensive media used by the Volvo Ocean Race saw
awareness of syndicates rising very significantly.
SYNDICATE AWARENESS
Volvo commissioned research before and after the event into the awareness of
the teams competing in the race. Respondents who were aware of the Volvo
Ocean Race were asked if they could name any of the syndicates competing in
the event. In other words, were people aware of these sponsorships?
MEDIA IMPACT 27

28 MEDIA IMPACT
Huge increases in overall awareness were evident, with the levels at least
doubling over time in most cases. Assa Abloy saw the most impressive
increases, seeing a rise of 31 percentage points (from 11.1% to 42.3%) across
the five territories. The winning syndicate was not far behind this with a gain of
30 percentage points (from 15.2% to 45.3%)
Overall, the awareness figures are impressive, particularly when looked at on a
country-by-country basis, where awareness of sponsors largely reflected the
general overall awareness in those countries.
Certain factors made a significant difference to the levels of awareness. These
were:
• The effectiveness of the PR and communications strategy
• The clarity and strength of the branding of the yachts
• The success of the syndicate
Encouragingly for the sponsors, it was sufficient for the teams to conduct just
one of these elements effectively. For instance, the second Nautor Challenge
boat (Amer Sports Too) might have suffered in terms of brand awareness as a
INCREASED AWARENESS IN ALL DEMOGRAPHIC
SECTORS
% OF AWARE RESPONDENTS WAVE 1 WAVE 2
SEX MALE 30.1 43.3
FEMALE 15.2 26.2
AGE 16-24 20.2 28.1
25-34 26.6 33.3
35-44 26.1 35.7
45-54 29.2 40.0
SOCIO 55-64 29.1 38.6
ECONOMIC
GROUP 65+ 17.3 37.0
ABC1 21.3 36.9
C2DE 16.2 33.3
AWARENESS OF SPONSORS VARIES FROM
COUNTRY TO COUNTRY
% OF RESPONDENTS FRANCE GERMANY SWEDEN UK USA
ILLBRUCK CHALLENGE 25.0 49.0 58.7 29.4 22.9
ASSA ABLOY 17.9 30.6 75.0 17.6 27.1
TEAM SEB 25.0 32.7 78.3 – 12.9
NAUTOR CHALLENGE/AMER SPORTS 28.6 36.7 56.5 38.2 40.0
TEAM TYCO 21.4 26.5 29.3 14.7 20.0
NEWS CORPORATION 17.9 17.3 37.0 26.5 14.3
DJUICE DRAGONS 10.7 31.6 18.5 8.8 15.7
THE AWARENESS OF THE SYNDICATES VARIES FROM COUNTRY TO
COUNTRY ACCORDING NATIONAL INTEREST IN THE RACE.

45.0
40.5
36.0
31.5
27.0
22.5
18.0
13.5
9.0
4.5
0
SIGNIFICANT INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE
SPONSORS’ BUSINESS
% of respondents
43.2
22.3
Team SEB
42.2
30.8
News Corp
23.6
7.1
Assa Abloy
16.1
2.1
Djuice
Aware of VOR Not aware of VOR
9.0
3.7
Illbruck
CHART SHOWING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPONSORS’ AREA OF BUSINESS
MEASURED AMONG PERSONS AWARE AND NOT AWARE OF THE RACE,
RESPECTIVELY. PERSONS AWARE OF THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE GAIN A GENUINE
KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPONSORS OF THE BOATS.
8.1
Tyco
4.6
6.8
2.7
Amer Sports
result of their finishing last but the effectiveness of the branding and the fact
that this was an all female team ensured that they achieved significant media
coverage. Naturally, those teams conducting all three elements effectively, such
as illbruck, Assa Abloy and SEB achieved the best overall awareness.
The Volvo Ocean Race is perhaps most impressive, not just as a means of
raising brand awareness, but also of communicating brand understanding to
the audience. The chart opposite, compares levels of general knowledge
about the teams’ sponsoring companies between people who follow the race
and those that don’t.
Whilst the better known brands have a better base level of understanding,
the chart shows that understanding of a brand increases in line with interest
in the race. This demonstrates the strength of the Volvo Ocean Race as a
sponsorship vehicle.
MEDIA IMPACT 29

30 MEDIA VALUE
MEDIA VALUE
For sponsors of the event, the value of media is an important measure and one
of the simplest ways of quantifying a return on investment. SMS evaluated the
value of exposure using internationally recognised standards.
The exposure is categorised as:
• PURE BRAND EXPOSURE:
In simple terms, the number of times a brand name appears in the press and
the number of seconds that a brand name was visible on TV.
• INDIRECT EXPOSURE:
The share of coverage calculated from dedicated race programmes.
In each case the value is then calculated by reference to a number of factors,
including the audience figures for any given media, the Cost Per Thousand of
advertising in that media, and the number of other sponsors mentioned in the
piece.
The figures are impressive. The exposure generated for Volvo and the Volvo
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
STRONG BUILD UP OF MEDIA VALUE DURING
THE WHOLE RACE
USD (millions)
17.08
Leg 1
10.57
Leg 2
11.69 11.54 11.45
Leg 3
Leg 4
Leg 5
Press
News/General Sports Programmes
Dedicated programmes (brand exposure)
Dedicated programmes (indirect exposure)
15.46
Leg 6
8.45
Leg 7
CHART SHOWS THE SPLIT OF THE MEDIA VALUE FOR THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE
ISOLATED AS A ‘BRAND’, SPLIT BY LEG AND BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT
SOURCES. THE STRONG TV COVERAGE IS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR, BUILDING
MOST EFFECTIVELY DURING LONG LEGS AND WHEN APPROACHING/VISITING
EUROPE AND THE US.
7.45
Leg 8
11.11
Leg 9

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
200 TO 300% RETURN ON INVESTMENT IN MEDIA
EXPOSURE ALONE
USD Millions
60.6
Illbruck
Challenge
51.5
57.8
Assa
Abloy
46.2 45.5
44.1
Nautor
Challenge
40.7
Press
News/General Sports Programmes
36.1 35.7
Dedicated programmes 33.3 (brand exposure)
Dedicated programmes 28.0 (indirect exposure)
34.1
Team
SEB
26.8
News
Corp
CHART SHOWING THE MEDIA VALUE FOR THE DIFFERENT TEAMS, SPLIT BY
SOURCE. THE EXPOSURE (SEE PAGE 32) EACH SYNDICATE RECEIVED WAS MORE
EVENLY SPREAD, BUT BRANDING TECHNIQUES ON BOAT, SAILS AND
CLOTHING PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN GENERATING VALUE. SEVERAL
BOATS WITH LESS SUCCESS ON THE SPORTING SIDE MANAGED TO GENERATE
GOOD MEDIA RETURN.
21.1
25.6
Djuice
Dragons
15.0
24.1
Team
Tyco
Ocean Race brand within press and TV had a total equivalent value of USD
104.8 million. Of this, just under half was through direct brand exposure and
just over half indirect exposure.
MEDIA VALUE FOR THE SYNDICATES
As already mentioned, the level of awareness, and consequently the value of
the media coverage, depends on race results, clarity of branding, and the
success of the PR and marketing supporting the sponsorship investment.
On average, the teams generated USD40 million of media value with the top
three generating an average of USD54 million. However, the share of voice
amongst the sponsors is very evenly spread when compared with, for instance
Formula 1 motor racing. Where Assa Abloy achieved brand legibility in 12% of
programming, a title sponsor of a winning Formula 1 team recently gained only
4% of total broadcast time. It is true to say that the top performing (in sporting
terms) sponsors in the race obtained excellent value by virtue of podium
results. They also succeeded in making the most of their greater prominence in
the media with the use of clear and distinctive branding.
MEDIA VALUE 31

32 MEDIA VALUE
Teams lower down the podium also achieved excellent media values by virtue
of distinctive branding or creative PR and marketing, as can be seen in relation
to the SEB yacht.
Nationality was a significant factor in producing high media values for the
teams with approximately one third of each of illbruck, Assa Abloy and Team
SEB’s media coming from their own country.
VALUE BY PROGRAMME TYPE
With the obvious exceptions of the first leg and the sixth leg, coverage was
evenly spread over the nine month period. The greater values in the first leg
are attributable to the fact that it was the start of the race. The sixth leg
generated higher values by virtue of the large amount of news coverage in the
USA as the boats raced into American ports. The length of the legs has an
impact – explaining the lower cumulative value in leg eight.
News played an important part in generating such high values for the team
sponsors. Of the media value generated in Germany 74% was from news as
the country focussed on the winning yacht, illbruck. TV news played a
Exposure hh:mm
144:00
120:00
96:00
72:00
48:00
24:00
00:00
EXPOSURE IN THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE IS RELATIVELY
EVENLY SPREAD
122:27
Assa
Abloy
116:57
Illbruck
98:13
Volvo Ocean
Race
76:47 75:08
News
Corp
Team
SEB
72:08
Team
Tyco
CHART ILLUSTRATING THE SPREAD OF TV EXPOSURE BETWEEN THE SPONSORS
AND THEIR BOATS, SHOWING SOMEWHAT HIGHER EXPOSURE FOR THE TWO
LEADERS, BUT A RELATIVELY EQUAL SPREAD AMONG THE OTHER TEAMS.
General Sports
News
Dedicated Repeat
Dedicated
69:44
Djuice
46:19
Amer
Sports

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
FORMULA 1 IS MORE
LEADER FOCUSSED
% share of voice
Ferari
32%
Williams
19%
McLaren
16%
Renault
6% 6%
Jordan
Sauber
5% 5%
BAR
CHART ILLUSTRATING THE SPLIT OF SHARE OF VOICE BETWEEN THE
TEAMS OF F1.
Toyota
4%
Arrows
3% 3%
Jaguar
Minardi
2%
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
SUSTAINED MEDIA VALUE OVER
NINE MONTHS
USD (millions)
16
Leg 1
11 11
Leg 2
Leg 3
10
Leg 4
News/General Sports Programmes
Dedicated Programmes (brand value)
Dedicated Programmes (share of coverage value)
11
Leg 5
15
Leg 6
8
Leg 7
CHART ILLUSTRATING THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE DIFFERENT SOURCES
OF TV EXPOSURE DURING THE COURSE OF THE RACE. NEWS BUILDS
AWARENESS AMONG A WIDER AUDIENCE, BUT IS ALSO AN IMPORTANT
FACTOR BEHIND THE EXPOSURE VALUE.
7
Leg 8
11
Leg 9
MEDIA VALUE 33

34 MEDIA VALUE
significant role in illbruck’s position as the syndicate with the highest media
value.
Dedicated programming was responsible for the vast majority of the media
value generated during the Volvo Ocean Race. The focus was, and will remain,
on ensuring that Volvo Ocean Race coverage is shown wherever possible on
quality slots on free to air terrestrial TV.
In terms of press coverage, illbruck generated significant value by creating
approximately 10,000 more mentions in the press than any other syndicate,
many of these mentions in high quality publications and with headline
mentions creating greater value.
Interestingly, the number of mentions in press articles for Assa Abloy is much
greater than for any other syndicate. Assa Abloy’s superior branding gained the
highest value from direct brand exposure. The syndicate adopted a style that
consisted of large lettering, striking graphics on all visible surfaces, and a colour
scheme that enhanced visibility in footage and photography.
BOTH HEADLINES AND PICTORIAL MENTIONS CREATE
BRAND VALUE
NO. OF NO. OF
HEADLINE MENTIONS PICTORIAL MENTIONS
ILLBRUCK CHALLENGE 1,801 331
VOLVO OCEAN RACE 1,526 271
ASSA ABLOY 485 480
TEAM SEB 416 158
DJUICE DRAGONS 148 264
TEAM TYCO 97 89
NEWS CORPORATION 72 96
NAUTOR CHALLENGE 51 299
TABLE ILLUSTRATES THE NUMBER OF HEADLINES AND PICTURES THE
TEAMS AND THE RACE ITSELF CAPTURED. ILLBRUCK, RECEIVED MORE
MENTIONS THAN THE RACE ITSELF, BUT ASSA ABLOY, WITH A VERY
DISTINCTIVE BRANDING ON BOAT AND SAILS ACHIEVED THEIR COVERAGE
THROUGH PICTURES.

Direct Brand Exposure (hh:mm)
17:5
15:0
12:5
10:0
7:5
5:0
2:5
0
YACHT BRANDING MAKES THE
DIFFERENCE
16:19
Assa Assa Abloy Abloy
Assa Abloy
06:08
Tyco
Tyco
05:13
Djuice
05:01
SEB
03:58
Illbruck
03:16
News Corporation
GRAPH SHOWING THE DIRECT BRAND EXPOSURE GENERATED FROM THE
BOAT AND SAILS. ASSA ABLOY’S DISTINCTIVE BRANDING CREATED
ENORMOUS EXPOSURE (THE AMER BAR DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY EXPOSURE
FOR THE WILSON AND SUUNTO BRANDS, HAVING A MORE PROMINENT
PRESENCE ON THE AMER SPORTS BOATS.)
01:42
Volvo Ocean Race
00:47
Amer Sports
RICK TOMLINSON
MEDIA VALUE 35

36 MEDIA STRATEGY
MEDIA STRATEGY FOR 2005-06
The maintenance of the premier position of the Volvo Ocean Race, its
profile as a major world sporting event, and the role of media coverage in
creating added return on investment remain at the heart of media strategy
initiatives for the 2005-06 race.
The media statistics from the 2001-02 Volvo Ocean Race are both a strong
endorsement of the news-focussed media strategy, as well as a benchmark
from which to measure the success of the strategy for the 2005-06 race.
In addition, there will be much greater integration and cross-fertilisation
between broadcast, print and Internet, plus all the latest technology the
Volvo Ocean Race is pioneering for the retrieval of images both moving
and still.
The main thrust of media communications planning for 2005-06 is television.
The focus on news will be built upon as well as targeting quality free-to-air
terrestrial television scheduling for race programming. There will also be
significant enhancements to print, radio and Internet media strategies.
A highly professional team will manage the media programme from race
headquarters, providing specialists to work both in the UK and at all relevant
ports/stopovers around the world, and work closely with media teams
appointed by the teams and race partners.
TELEVISION
Television coverage remains the most important objective for some of the
teams competing in the Volvo Ocean Race. Capture and rapid distribution of
quality footage from the yachts is of primary importance. The new Volvo Ocean
70s will all have dedicated media editing stations with the latest in
communication technologies to transmit the footage quickly back to race
headquarters.
The aim of the news-focussed strategy will be to reach the largest and most
diverse audience possible, to raise awareness of the race and encourage
follow-up with dedicated race programming. News feeds will flow daily when
the yachts are racing, six-hourly at starts and finishes, and as required during
stopovers.
A network of partnerships will be created with producers and broadcasters in
key markets and with specialist television distributors in the remaining
territories to reach as wide a broadcast base as possible. These will not be
restricted to sports, but will include many different styles of programming. But,
there will still be daily, often many times a day, updates of material available as
the race progresses and broadcasters in different times zones demand both the
latest news and the latest pictures.

PRINT MEDIA
The written media remain an important source of interest in the Volvo Ocean
Race, whether it is the daily and weekly newspapers or magazine press. The
2001-02 race was reported widely across a quality press. The 2005-06 printed
media strategy will focus on looking at all aspects of the race and potential for
sports, news, lifestyle and feature pieces.
The Volvo Ocean Race team will deliver a premium, proactive service of story
leads and race information, using crew e-mails and centrally developed
information to a broad, international corps of publications with which the race
already has strongly developed links.
These will be shared with the press teams employed by each competing
syndicate in order to create as integrated an approach as possible.
RADIO
Radio performed well in the 2001-02 race. For the 2005-06 Volvo Ocean Race,
the radio strategy will follow the television strategy with a primary focus on
news distribution to maximise reach. There will be a news distribution service
from race headquarters and from the stopover ports supplying material
through strategic partner broadcasters in targeted countries.
The service will be expanded to take in a multilingual approach, delivering
mother tongue interviews and programming.
Programmes will develop a diverse approach,
using ‘core’ news and sports results as a
platform for lifestyle and personality material.
RICK TOMLINSON
MEDIA STRATEGY 37

38 MEDIA STRATEGY
THE INTERNET
The official website will remain an important port of call for enthusiasts, making
regularly updated information available on both progress by each yacht when
racing and background information on people and incidents. Using the “web”
concept, the official website will act as both a hub for creating links to partner
sites and as a recipient for traffic fed in by a wide variety of sites whenever they
have a reason to feature the Volvo Ocean Race.
Overall, the media strategy is designed to ensure that there is a strong flow of
information running not just for the eight months of the race, but also in the run
up to the start of the 2005-06 race. News agencies and distribution
partnerships will be developed to widen the customer base and the
considerable archive of material – film, sound, pictures and words – will also be
made available.
THE TOP FIVE
PUBLICATIONS
READ IN EACH
MARKET WERE
AS FOLLOWS:
% OF RESPONDENTS
FRANCE
WAVE 1 AWARE NOT AWARE
QUEST FRANCE 10.0 7.8
LE PARISIEN/AUJOURD ‘HUI 9.0 5.9
LIBERATION 4.0 8.8
LE MONDE 7.0 2.9
L’EQUIPE 8.0 1.0
WAVE 2
QUEST FRANCE 13.0 8.9
LE MONDE 9.0 5.0
LE PARISIEN/AUJOURD ‘HUI 7.0 5.9
L’EQUIPE 6.0 5.9
SUD QUEST 7.0 3.0
www.volvooceanrace.org

% OF RESPONDENTS
UK
WAVE 1 AWARE NOT AWARE
THE DAILY MAIL 18.6 13.9
THE SUN 10.8 21.8
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 9.8 8.9
THE DAILY MIRROR 10.8 6.9
THE TIMES 10.8 3.0
WAVE 2
THE DAILY MAIL 17.0 17.0
THE SUN 17.0 15.0
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 6.0 5.0
THE DAILY MIRROR 9.0 8.0
THE GUARDIAN 7.0 6.0
% OF RESPONDENTS
GERMANY
WAVE 1 AWARE NOT AWARE
BILD 10.1 14.8
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG 9.1 7.4
SUDDESUTSCHE ZEITUNG 5.1 3.7
DIE ZIET 3.0 2.8
BILD AM SONNTAG 1.0 2.8
WAVE 2
BILD 5.0 15.0
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG 15.0 2.0
SUDDESUTSCHE ZEITUNG 7.0 6.0
WELT AM SONNTAGE 3.0 2.0
BILD AM SONNTAG 2.0 2.0
% OF RESPONDENTS
USA
WAVE 1 AWARE NOT AWARE
NEW YORK TIMES 7.8 3.9
MIAMI HERALD/EL NUEVO HERALD 2.9 4.9
SEATTLE TIMES 4.9 2.0
BALTIMORE SUN 3.9 2.0
WALL STREET TODAY 3.9 1.
WAVE 2
MIAMI HERALD/EL NUEVO HERALD11.8 2.5
BALTIMORE SUN 11.8 0.8
SEATTLE TIMES 2.9 7.5
WALL STREET TODAY 2.0 5.0
NEW YORK TIMES 3.9 3.3
% OF RESPONDENTS
SWEDEN
WAVE 1 AWARE NOT AWARE
AFTONBLADET 16.2 12.2
DAGENS NYHETER 17.1 9.2
EXPRESSEN/GT/KVP 11.4 10.2
SYDSVENSKA DAGBLADET 4.8 6.1
SVENSKA DAGBLADET 6.7 3.1
WAVE 2
AFTONBLADET 16.8 16.2
DAGENS NYHETER 12.9 14.1
EXPRESSEN/GT/KVP 8.9 7.1
SYDSVENSKA DAGBLADET 10.9 2.0
GOTEBORGSPOSTEN 5.9 5.1
RICK TOMLINSON
MEDIA STRATEGY 39

40 YACHT SPONSORSHIP
YACHT SPONSORSHIP IN THE
VOLVO OCEAN RACE
Athousand hours of broadcast footage. Cumulative audiences of nearly a
billion people. Close to 40% awareness of the Volvo Ocean Race across
five key territories. Returns on investment of between 200-300% in terms of
brand exposure alone.
With such a strong focus on the media statistics and the value of the coverage,
in brand exposure terms, it is possible to become too narrowly focussed on
media as an exclusive rationale for an investment in the Volvo Ocean Race.
For many of the 150 companies that have been involved in this event since
1973, the key benefits have been in the unique opportunities the race offers to
meet other, critical business-to-business or internal marketing needs. For some,
the external publicity is something that has been seen as an added bonus to
another core objective that they could not achieve through more traditional
marketing methods.
The Volvo Ocean Race also offers what an advertising or PR campaign cannot:
the facility to engage directly with people at an emotional level. Whether that
means bringing clients and distributors to unforgettable experiences at race
starts and finishes, inspiring a global workforce by making them part of a larger
ocean race team, or creating education programmes to bring sponsor’s teams
into schools in the local community, these are all unique opportunities created
by the Volvo Ocean Race.
As with most premier sports, significant investment demands a sophisticated
and consolidated approach to marketing the event and ensuring that full use
of the investment is made. The best way of examining the many ways of using
the event is to look at examples of successful sponsorship campaigns.
There are three case studies provided here. The first, EF Language in the 1997-
98 Whitbread Round The World Race, is a detailed look at how a company
identified and then addressed a number of key business challenges through
the effective use of a sponsorship of a race team. The second two case studies
look at two successful sponsorships of the 2001-02 race, those of SEB and
Assa Abloy.
In each case, the motivation for their sponsorships was different. What they
have in common is the way in which complex business issues were
addressed effectively by clever integration of the sponsorship into many
aspects of their business.

CARLO BORLENGHI
YACHT SPONSORSHIP 41

42 CASE STUDIES
CASE STUDY 1: TEAM EF
EF EDUCATION, A WORLD-WIDE NETWORK OF LANGUAGE SCHOOLS, USED
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE (THEN THE WHITBREAD ROUND THE WORLD RACE)
TO BOOST BRAND AWARENESS, MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES AND ENHANCE
RECRUITMENT.
EF has become the world’s largest language training school providing
courses and exchange programmes for students of all ages and providing
study and travel for over 500 thousand people yearly.
EF looked upon Volvo Ocean Race’s predecessor, the 1997-98 Whitbread
Round the World Race, as an opportunity to meet some very specific
objectives. EF wanted to use their sponsorship of the race as a way of boosting
awareness of their brand, as an internal marketing exercise to boost morale,
and as a way of tackling one of their key difficulties, recruitment.
In 1996, EF employed over 2,000 staff in 40 countries around the world plus a
further 10,000 teachers and commission-based sales people. The company’s
marketing strategy consisted of direct mailing and customer loyalty and referral
campaigns. This type of marketing was, by its nature, niche and targeted. It
focussed exclusively on sales, but had done very little to grow the EF brand.
This is a summary of Simon Rines’ report from his book ‘Driving Business Though Sport’
Recognising this, in 1994 EF went through a major re-branding exercise and
had started to increase its brand awareness by advertising on MTV, giving it
exposure to its key target audiences as well as engaging in some lower profile
sponsorships such as the Swedish Youth Sailing Championships and the World
Wildlife Fund for Nature.
BUSINESS ISSUES FOR EF
By the mid 1990’s EF had been growing rapidly and had doubled turnover in
four years. As a result, many areas of the business were being stretched to
capacity and certain areas of the business were under extreme pressure. These
were: workforce morale, recruitment and branding.
WORKFORCE MORALE
The fast growth of the company had led to some employees being overlooked

STEPHEN MUNDAY/ALLSPORT
CASE STUDIES 43

44 CASE STUDIES
and consequently workforce morale had suffered and staff turnover was high.
The business was spread over a wide geographic area and staff were finding it
hard to feel part of such a large international organisation. Some of the smaller
offices had become isolated and this was jeopardising the company’s efforts to
offer a consistent standard of service globally.
RECRUITMENT
The rapid growth had also created a seemingly insatiable demand for new,
skilled employees. However, the company’s profile and brand presence was not
sufficiently high to attract the best potential employees.
BRANDING
EF had not invested in establishing itself as a brand. Despite being the world’s
largest language tuition company, it only had 1% of the global market and was
not well known.
The market in which EF operates is highly competitive with strong local
companies. The company felt that, by developing strong brand identity, it
would gain a competitive advantage. The enhanced brand identity would also
assist in their recruitment.
A separate, but important, problem was that the exchange schemes that EF
provided were losing their appeal amongst the young people they were aimed
at. They were no longer seen as trendy, fun or adventurous.
EF’S OBJECTIVES
The difficulties EF was experiencing led to the formulation of distinct internal
and external objectives.
EXTERNAL
• To enhance and build the EF brand through increased awareness of the
company and its activities. This was to be in two phases. Firstly, awareness
and association and, secondly, preference and loyalty;
• To attract high calibre recruits in local markets around the world; and
• To create an adventurous and exciting image for EF to help drive sales of its
exchange programmes.
INTERNAL
• To unite global employees behind a common cause;
• To improve morale amongst all EF employees and create a feeling of pride
and loyalty; and
• To reduce staff turnover.

WHY THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE?
The Volvo Ocean Race (then The Whitbread Round the World Race) was
chosen from other properties as the ideal vehicle to meet the various
objectives. This was both because of the profile and image of the event as well
as the practical opportunities that it offered.
IMAGE
In terms of image, the Volvo Ocean Race offers several that matched those
intended for the brand. They are:
• ADVENTURE
• EXCITEMENT
• DYNAMISM
• SPEED
Yachting, particularly at international level, is also increasingly seen as
fashionable and high-tech (vis sponsorships by fashion houses Prada and Louis
Vuitton and technology companies Toshiba, Philips and Sony). EF is regarded
as being at the forefront in terms of use of technology and wanted to promote
this by association with the Volvo Ocean Race.
PROFILE
The Volvo Ocean Race delivers very impressive audience figures across the
majority of EF’s target markets for a prolonged period (six to nine months of
racing), and is in the top ranking of global sports events.
PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES
On top of the image-based attributes and global media profile, the race
offered practical advantages that matched EF’s other objectives exactly. These
included:
• A primary global sporting event: the event is international, visiting at least
eight countries during the 1997-98 circumnavigation including France, UK,
USA, South Africa, Brazil.
• Longevity: The event lasts for between six and nine months (depending on
course) but with the preparation and build phase can be leveraged for three
years.
• Low risk: Experience demonstrates that well managed and marketed
projects delivered between 200 and 300% ROI just in terms of media value
irrespective of the result in the race.
• Good platform for internal and external relationship marketing: Sponsors
increasingly justify their sponsorship solely in terms of returns from the
unique relationship marketing opportunities that the Volvo Ocean Race
creates.
• Unique opportunities for exposure: The race yachts create a blank canvas for
creative use of branding with very striking visual imagery and as title
STEPHEN MUNDAY/ALLSPORT, TEAM EF/ALLSPORT
CASE STUDIES 45

46 CASE STUDIES
sponsors the brand name receives frequent mention in media reports.
• No gender bias: Almost uniquely for a major international sporting event
men and women compete on equal terms in the Volvo Ocean Race.
• Multinational teams and crews: the mix of nationalities amongst the crews
sailing the yachts reinforced EF’s business case on the importance of
language skills.
STRATEGY
EF Education created a subsidiary company in Sweden called EF Yacht Racing
AB to run Team EF. The syndicate allocated a budget of USD16.8 million over
the three years of which EF Education contributed USD11 million (the
remainder coming from other sponsors). This equated to approximately
USD5.6 million per annum.
USD11 million was spent on building two boats and EF also spent an additional
USD5.8 million on exploitation of the sponsorship.
EF’s strategy was to differentiate itself from other competitors in several ways.
For the first time in the history of the race, the company entered two teams –
EF Language with an all male crew and EF Education with an all female crew.
The use of two boats offered additional publicity and better economies of scale
in all aspects of the race.
EF commissioned the British design agency, Tomato, to create a striking and
distinctive graphic profile for the yachts. Tomato created a modern and
dramatic design covering the yacht and sails and this design was carried over
into clothing and merchandise.
Even the decision as to where to build the yachts was driven by the desire to
maximise publicity. Göteborg in Sweden was chosen because, as a city with a
long boat building tradition, it had a good natural linkage and, as a major city,
was more accessible to the media.
INTERNAL EXPLOITATION
Internal marketing was geared towards creating the strongest possible sense of
involvement and ownership amongst EF’s employees.
PRESENTATIONS
Presentations were made to EF staff all over the world before and after
the race.

INTERNET/INTRANET
An intranet site was created to which all personnel had access. This was linked
through to the team’s own website.
NEWSLETTERS AND PRESS RELEASES
A newsletter was sent to all employees once a week during the preparatory
phase of the race and twice a week during the race itself.
SALES TARGETS AND INCENTIVES
EF set incentives and targets for its employees offering the reward of “money
can’t buy” prizes to visit the stopover ports as they called into a variety of exotic
locations around the world.
CLOTHING
All employees were given clothing branded with both the event’s own logo and
that of Team EF.
PERSONNEL EVENTS AND SAILING DAYS
All 2,000 permanent employees of the company were given the opportunity to
visit one of the stopover ports around the world.
EXTERNAL EXPLOITATION
EF ensured that the sponsorship of the Volvo Ocean Race was fully integrated
with its global marketing strategy and linked into all of its advertising, sales
materials, exhibition stands and brochures.
EDUCATION
EF produced course materials relating to the race with maps, study texts and
questions. The material was made available to all school children in Europe
over the age of 13.
CUSTOMER AND SUPPLIER EVENTS
Customers and suppliers were invited to attend sailing days, presentations and
other race related events. Over 4,000 also sailed on the EF yachts. A specially
designed, interactive exhibition facility was transported to various locations
around the world. It included televisions, computers and brochures educating
visitors abut the race, Team EF and EF Education itself. Other more physical
challenges related to the race itself, were added to the race village, giving
visitors the chance to experience the race more directly.
JOHN GICHIGI/ALLSPORT
CASE STUDIES 47

48 CASE STUDIES
THE MEDIA
A three man team was appointed to handle all press relations. EF also
commissioned two of the world’s leading yachting photographers to sail on the
yachts and take high quality pictures of the yachts during the first two legs of
the race.
EF had its own film crew. This footage was pooled with the race organisers and
distributed onwards to TWI and also to free-to-air terrestrial programmes.
CONCLUSION
The company reported successful achievement of all of its objectives.
Looking at the internal marketing objectives they reported that their
sponsorship resulted in:
• Committed and motivated personnel.
• A stronger feeling of unity throughout the company.
• A sense of pride in the company and its participation in the race.
As for external marketing objectives, they report the following results:
• Exposure: The ROI in terms of the estimated value media coverage alone for
EF was nearly 500%. The company evaluated press coverage relating to the
project with an estimated value of USD8 million and estimated value of TV
exposure achieved by the two yachts of USD40 million with an additional
USD36 million of news coverage.
• Recruitment: The number of spontaneous applications increased
considerably. Where previously EF had spent considerable amounts on
advertising, candidates were now registering without reference to
advertisements.
• Sales increases: EF experienced sales increases in some territories from the
moment they announced sponsorship of the race and measurable increases
in sales in other countries as the race reached them over the nine months.

CLIVE MASON/ALLSPORT
CASE STUDIES 49

50 CASE STUDIES
CASE STUDY 2: TEAM SEB
SEB USED THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE TO ESTABLISH THEIR BRAND IN A NEW
MARKET, STRENGTHEN THEIR BRAND IN EXISTING MARKETS, MAINTAIN
AND CREATE CUSTOMERS AND UNIFY AND INTEGRATE THEIR WORKFORCE.
SEB is one of the largest bank and insurance groups in Scandinavia where
it is regarded as a traditional bank and a major financial player in the Baltic
states. The company had been expanding since 1997 when it merged with
Trygg-Hansa, a Swedish insurance company. From being a locally based
Swedish bank the company has expanded into a full-range financial group with
operations across Northern Europe.
In 2000, SEB purchased the German bank BfG and was building an increasingly
strong position in the European financial market, as well as being represented
in 20 countries around the world. The group was also mounting a strong
offensive as a leading internet bank.
With this expansion and the recent merger activity, the bank had been looking
at ways of fulfilling a number of business objectives.
BUSINESS ISSUES FOR SEB
Following the merger with Trygg-Hansa in 1997, SEB found itself in a banking
and insurance market place with escalating competition. During these years,
the bank grew from being a Swedish bank with most of its employees in
Sweden, to a Northern European bank with more than half of its employees
and customers outside Sweden. BfG alone had over 170 branches across
Germany and 4,200 employees.
The purchase of BfG led to the SEB brand being launched in Germany in 2001.
Whilst well known in Sweden, SEB was a name and a brand that was virtually
unknown in Germany except within a small circle.

RICK TOMLINSON
51
CASE STUDIES 51

52 CASE STUDIES
SEB’S OBJECTIVES
SEB’s objectives were set in response to a clear set of business needs. The
objectives, particularly as regards media returns were specific and measurable.
EXTERNAL
• Strengthening the SEB brand in Europe, and launching the brand in
Germany.
• Creating unique opportunities to strengthen customer relations with existing
and new clients alike.
• Investing in a sponsorship property that created a return on investment of at
least 200% in terms of media value alone.
INTERNAL
• Finding a platform for internal communications to integrate and unify the
newly merged workforce.
• Create broad involvement and participation from all of SEB’s business units.
• To unite global employees behind a common cause.
WHY THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE?
The board of SEB were approached by Global Team, a syndicate formed under
the leadership of the yachtsman Gunnar ‘Gurra’ Krantz, who presented the
Volvo Ocean Race project and invited SEB to become the principal partner.
Global team had solid experience from previous race campaigns including the
Intrum Justitia and Swedish Match projects.
The board carefully considered the Volvo Ocean Race and was satisfied that it
would meet all of their objectives, both internal and external.
The board felt that the Volvo Ocean Race offered the following advantages:
• Brand image and target market: Research conducted by Research
International into interest and participation in sailing in Europe indicated that
there was an excellent match between the sailing audience and SEB’s target
market. The bank was keen to create a ‘softer’ and more accessible image
rather as a traditional bank with stiffer, more conservative values. In terms of
brand value, the Volvo Ocean Race offers several attributes that matched

those intended for the SEB brand. These were excitement, endurance,
professionalism, modern technology and teamwork.
• Profile: The race has significant global profile as one of the world’s top
premier sports but, most importantly, was well known in SEB’s key markets.
The media profile provided the means of delivering SEB’s brand message
effectively to an engaged and interested audience.
• Internal engagement: As a truly global event with an 8-9 month duration and
18-24 month build up, the race offered an excellent opportunity to engage
with employees across all areas of the business and encourage involvement
not simply through the intranet but also physically in events organised
around the stop-overs.
• Client entertainment: There are a number of opportunities for unique,
‘money-can’t-buy’ client entertainment opportunities ranging from sailing
days in the run up to and following the event and events created around the
8 or so stopovers in the ports around the world.
• Return on Investment: SEB had canvassed previous sponsors of the race and
conducted research that demonstrated that they should expect returns of
between 200-300% on investment in terms of media exposure alone.
STRATEGY
SEB established Team SEB. The sailing team was allocated USD12 million over
three years that represented their part of the cost of the boat and its crew. SEB
allocated a further USD9 million to support value added commercial activities
around the event.
SEB decided to let the dramatic nature of the sport feed into and transform
their brand identity. Working with a creative agency, they used highly distinctive
green branding for the yacht and created an imaginary ‘green thread’ that
represented the values of their team in the Volvo Ocean Race. This “green
thread” flowed through all of their marketing, internal engagement and
customer activities to create a consistent image.
Using teams with well-defined areas of responsibility, SEB put together a
commercial activity programme of impressive logistical complexity to support
the event. The strategy proved prescient, as SEB suffered two major setbacks
during the race, rudder failure and a dismasting, which wrecked any chances of
the yacht winning the race. But SEB was able to continue with its programme
OSKAR KIHLBORG, RICK TOMLINSON
CASE STUDIES 53 53

54 CASE STUDIES
and, at the end, report major successes. Whilst SEB finished second last in the
race they finished 4th in media terms. SEB always focussed on measuring the
race in business, rather than sporting, terms.
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING
SEB was able to organise over 350 events associated with the race, 95 of them
for over 100 guests, and there were over 400 opportunities to take people
sailing on the race yachts before and during the race. A total of 24,300 guests
were entertained using the Volvo Ocean Race as the attraction. SEB conducted
surveys to ensure the investment was well made – all events receiving high
approval ratings by the guests.
MEDIA VALUE
SEB says it achieved its aim of 200% return on investment in terms of media
value. From an initial SEK200 million investment it estimates a return of SEK440
million in media before, during and after the race. Most significantly, the
majority of SEB’s coverage was in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK, New
Zealand and Germany – many of which are key markets for the bank. In
qualitative terms, 72% of Swedes and 66% of Germans who new of the race
felt that the race had increased their knowledge of SEB. Approximately 70% of
Germans and Swedes had a positive attitude to the sponsorship, feeling that it
enhanced SEB’s image.
CUSTOMER AWARENESS
The race achieved 95% awareness in Sweden, with SEB becoming the best
known boat there, and 35% in Germany. Perhaps due to its striking livery
coupled with the comprehensive support of their sponsorship, the team SEB
boat was the third most recognised in the entire race, an amazing achievement
considering the placing of the yacht in the overall results.
INTERNAL ENGAGEMENT
From an internal marketing perspective, the SEB project was a huge success.
Initial reluctance to get involved from the German business was rapidly
converted to enthusiastic support. About 99% of SEB employees were aware
of the investment in the Volvo Ocean Race and about 84% judged it to be
positive with some 62% of them following race progress every week.

CONCLUSION
The companies conclusions were: “Team SEB was a commercial success. We
achieved our overall goals. There were very positive opinions from our
customers. We have enjoyed strong support and pride among our employees.
There was continuous presence in the media and ‘soft values’ around SEB as
an enterprise were communicated effectively. The entire group joined forces
around a project which SEB ran internationally and the organisation learned to
cooperate in a new manner. Communication from the project was integrated in
all parts and we built a global network of contacts that enables different and
unique solutions, even in the future”.
TEAM SEB
CASE STUDIES 55

56 CASE STUDIES
CASE STUDY 3: TEAM ASSA ABLOY
ASSA ABLOY, THE WORLD’S LEADING LOCK GROUP, PARTICIPATED IN THE
2001-02 VOLVO OCEAN RACE TO SUPPORT THE INTEGRATION PROCESS
OF 100 COMPANIES WORLDWIDE, DEVELOP ITS CORPORATE IDENTITY
AND STRENGTHEN THE RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMERS AND
DISTRIBUTORS WORLDWIDE.
The company is interesting in that it is a young company established in
1994, yet comprised many old, well-established lock companies each with
strong national identities. By 2000, when the company decided to sponsor a
team in the Volvo Ocean Race, it had expanded rapidly by a mixture of organic
growth and acquisition, most notably of the Yale group in August 2000. Sales
growth has been rapid, from sales of SEK3 billion the group now has sales of
SEK25 billion (approx USD2.5 billion). Yet its share of a very fragmented world
market was still just over 10%.
In 2000, as a result of this rapid growth and acquisition, the Assa Abloy Group
comprised 25,000 employees in more than 100 companies in over 40
countries.
Because of the race’s global itinerary and nine month duration, Assa Abloy saw
the Volvo Ocean Race as a perfect vehicle for an accelerated integration of
many small to medium size companies and a way of establishing a corporate
identity strongly aligned with the race values.
BUSINESS ISSUES
Assa Abloy’s rapid expansion had created issues that needed to be dealt with
in order to secure the Group’s future success and continued growth. The
acquisition of the Yale Intruder Group created opportunities for the group in
new markets. Yale, in common with the other smaller global companies in the
Assa Abloy Group, had its own strong corporate identity, work ethic and
culture.
A GROUP OF DISTINCT, GLOBAL COMPANIES
Including the Yale Group, Assa Abloy had acquired 100 companies since the
company’s birth in 1994. Until the acquisition of Yale in 2000, the integration
process had been relatively straightforward.
The acquisition of the Yale Group presented new challenges. Of comparable
size with Assa Abloy with 13,000 employees in 30 companies, the newly
expanded group was clearly going to need a well-managed global operation

RICHARD MASON/ASSA ABLOY RACING TEAM
CASE STUDIES 57

58 CASE STUDIES
to supervise the integration into the larger Group.
CORPORATE IDENTITY
Employees, naturally enough, identify with their company – its heritage,
traditions and values. Acquisitions require that the parent company faces the
challenge of educating its new employees as to its own values, work ethics and
identity in order to create feelings of pride and loyalty in the new, expanded
company. Assa Abloy was faced with this challenge, exacerbated by the fact
that it needed to work with 100 companies in over 40 countries around the
world.
BRANDING
As a holding company and not a consumer brand in itself, Assa Abloy had not
invested in building brand awareness. The company acquired many companies
whose various local trademarks were well known in their respective markets
where Assa Abloy was largely unknown. The company decided that they would
use the Volvo Ocean Race as a means to generate awareness of the Assa Abloy
brand amongst customers and distributors and also to encourage employee
pride in the Group.
ASSA ABLOY’S OBJECTIVES
• Assa Abloy assessed its objectives in percentage terms:
• 60% of objective was as an integration exercise around a strong corporate
identity
• 30% was to build relationships with primary customers and distributors
• 10% was as a brand awareness exercise
WHY THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE?
Magnus Olsson, one of the world’s best-known sailors who made his name with
the Volvo Ocean Race and its predecessor The Whitbread Round the World
Race, had made a presentation to Assa Abloy some years before. When the
company was asking itself how to address the challenges it faced, their
recollection of this presentation led them to approach him again. The race
was chosen because:
PERFECT GEOGRAPHICAL MATCH
There was a near perfect geographical match between the course of the Volvo
Ocean Race and the new companies in the Assa Abloy Group. Their companies

were found on all of the world’s continents. En route, scheduled stops would
be made in ports close to most of their major markets.
RACE DURATION
The company felt that the duration of the race provided a challenging but
achievable time frame within which they would condense the integration
process. They set the ambitious target of fitting an integration process they
would normally expect to complete in three to four years, into the nine months
duration of the race. Drawing inspiration from their race team's progress they
would use the race itinerary and route through their key markets to set a
sequence of uncompromisable deadlines for corporate activity.
MULTI-NATIONAL
The multi-national nature of the event – global in its reach and using multinational
crews (Assa Abloy’s own crew had team members from Sweden,
England, America, France, South Africa, New Zealand and Spain) meant the
event had a relevance to almost all of the 40 countries in which they had
companies.
BRAND VALUES
Assa Abloy wanted to communicate a strong corporate identity to both
management and, with a high percentage of its workforce on the shop floor,
the wider blue-collar workforce. The company felt that this corporate identity
was mirrored by the corporate values exemplified by the Volvo Ocean Race –
realism, vision, courage, ethics, true leadership. The race reflected the
company’s belief that ‘people make the difference’.
The race also provided a strong metaphor for management: know your ship,
know where you are going, have the courage and expertise to make quick
decisions, trust your crew, never underestimate your competitors.
BRAND EXPOSURE
Anna Bernsten, VP Corporate Communication, says that brand exposure was
most important as a method of creating employee pride, thus aiding the
integration process. The Volvo Ocean Race would also expose the brand to
global customers and distributors.
STRATEGY
THIERRY MARTINEZ, RICHARD MASON/ASSA ABLOY RACING TEAM
Assa Abloy allocated SEK100 million over a three year period for their
participation in the Volvo Ocean Race, which is less than 1% of the Group
marketing and sales budget for the period.
CASE STUDIES 59

60 CASE STUDIES
Assa Abloy built two boats in the UK. The boats were launched in May 2001,
named at Tower Bridge in London and then moved to Göteborg, Sweden for
testing and training.
INTERNAL EXPLOITATION
PRE-RACE EDUCATION
Anchoring and creating a sense of belonging. Prior to the start of the race, the
company wanted to create ‘a buzz’ around the sponsorship and felt that to
ensure its success, they needed to work at getting buy-in from the various
companies and their employees around the world. This activity started in
September 2000, one year ahead of the race.
A THREE-FOUR YEAR INTEGRATION EXERCISE WAS ACHIEVED IN
NINE MONTHS
Anna Bernsten says that some people doubt the statistic. “If you doubt it, let's
put it another way”, she says. “Imagine you need to conduct an exercise that
will pull together 25,000 employees in 100 companies present in 40 countries
around the world. That process will need nine major senior management
meetings, 10 two-day management seminars with 900 managers attending,
eight international exhibitions, 60 global company communiqués, 20 press
conferences, 80 press releases, and then 3,500 in-depth interviews of
management meeting participants to assess effectiveness. How long do you
think you would allow for this exercise? We did it in nine months.”
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
To assist internal communication, Assa Abloy created 90 ‘champions’ to lead
Assa Abloy Racing Team (AART) internally and increase information flow. A
focal point was a well-established and exciting intranet site. The company ran
competitions and incentive schemes.
Throughout the race, they produced 13 issues of an AART news letter, 38 AART
bulletins and nine issues of Assa Abloy News. Six stopover videos were created
explaining branding, vision and values. An attractive team merchandise
collection was produced and distributed.
EXTERNAL EXPLOITATION
BRANDING OF THE YACHT
The company had decided that they would not support the sponsorship with

advertising, but would instead rely on media exposure of the yacht and public
relations to boost brand awareness. Assa Abloy used two consultants to assist
in the design of yacht branding and then looked at examples of successful and
unsuccessful branding to decide how to most effectively brand the yacht. The
result was the most distinctive and attractive branding of all of the yachts and
ensured they received plentiful coverage.
MEDIA
No external worldwide PR agencies were used. The Assa Abloy press team
focussed on local press coverage in each country and relied on the Volvo
Ocean Race organisation, the syndicate’s press contact persons and the yacht’s
performance in the race for maximising international coverage. Crew were well
trained in camera skills and media handling, and PR events in each port visited
ensured good local coverage. In all, 80 press releases were issued, 20 press
conferences were held and 7,000 articles published. Towards trade press Assa
Abloy worked together with local PR agencies.
RACE VILLAGE
As well as providing a base for internal corporate activity, Assa Abloy
entertained customers and suppliers at their own stand in each port’s race
village. The stand was open to the public and a focus for competitions, video
and crew presentations, autograph signings and other activities.
CONCLUSION
Assa Abloy surveyed the company to assess the success of the integration
exercise. The results show a stunning success, 3,500 in-depth interviews were
conducted pre and post race by international research company Opticom. The
results showed that a large majority of employees had increased their
knowledge of the companies mission, priorities and ways of working. 73% of
employees described themselves as feeling "very proud" of belonging to the
Assa Abloy Group.
87% of managers felt more proud of belonging to the group because of the
participation in the event, and felt that the Volvo Ocean Race had helped
spread knowledge of the company to their customers.
In terms of media evaluation, the SMS report showed that Assa Abloy
enjoyed the most brand exposure of any entrant in the race. The value of
the media coverage generated amounted to USD57.8 million, trade
press excluded.
RICHARD MASON/ASSA ABLOY RACING TEAM
CASE STUDIES 61

62 CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE HAS EVOLVED OVER THIRTY YEARS. IT IS NOW VASTLY DIFFERENT
FROM THE EVENT THAT WAS CONCEIVED OVER A PINT OF BEER IN A PUB BETWEEN COL. BILL
WHITBREAD OF THE BREWING FAMILY, AND ADMIRAL OTTO STEINER, OF THE ROYAL NAVAL
SAILING ASSOCIATION. BUT SOME THINGS NEVER ALTER, AND ALTHOUGH IT IS NOW A
HIGHLY PROFESSIONAL EVENT, IT WILL ALWAYS REMAIN AN ADVENTURE.
The challenge of the ocean never changes and it is still just as demanding
to race through the desolate Southern Ocean as it was back in 1973. The
respect that is felt as Cape Horn slips silently away is never dimmed.
The race is still the ultimate in human endeavour, and it will always demand
faith, trust and respect among teammates. It is life at the extreme and will
always remain so.
Where it has seen its most dramatic change, however is in the way the sport
has come of age as a modern, sophisticated sports marketing opportunity.
Advances in technology have enabled extraordinary changes to yacht design
DANIEL FORSTER

CONCLUSION 63

64 CONCLUSION
that see the new generations of these yachts engaging in ever more
competitive racing over vast distances and, year on year, breaking speed and
mileage records. Technology, too, has been responsible for the hugely
enhanced media interest in this event with satellite communications from the
yachts now enabling astonishing footage to be sent from deep in the Southern
Ocean. This, in turn, has led to some equally astonishing media statistics that
have been set out in this document.
As business becomes ever more global – the advantages for the event's
sponsors of an event that plays out in nine key markets, creating sustained
sporting action over eight months are becoming increasingly apparent. Added
to the unique brand exposure and brand building opportunities afforded to
sponsors by a race of this global reach and duration, sponsors are finding that
the race can satisfy complex business issues. The Volvo Ocean Race has a
proven track record of providing sponsors with unbuyable opportunities for
bringing clients and distributors to unforgettable experiences at race starts and
finishes, inspiring global workforce by making them part of a larger ocean race
team, or creating education programs to bring sponsor's teams into schools in
local communities everywhere.
The Volvo Ocean Race is a unique sporting event and a unique marketing
opportunity that creates unparalleled returns on investment.
RICK TOMLINSON

INTRODUCTION
IT IS UNLIKELY THAT
COLONEL BILL
WHITBREAD, OF THE
BREWING FAMILY AND
ADMIRAL OTTO STEINER,
OF THE ROYAL NAVAL
SAILING ASSOCIATION,
EVER ENVISAGED THE
MAGNITUDE OF THE
EVENT THEY CONCEIVED
‘OVER A PINT’ OF BEER
30 YEARS AGO.
Although a ‘round the world yacht race’ had been
considered throughout the last century, it needed the
financial support and organisational expertise which
Whitbread and the RNSA were able to put together. The first
Whitbread Round the World Race got underway in
September 1973, and featured yachts which were little
different from those cruising around the Mediterranean at that
time. Since then, the ocean racing yacht has developed into a
high-tech state-of-the-art speed machine, with little comfort
spared for the crew but with leading-edge technology.
This new technology has also completely altered the
concept of ocean racing. In the past, skippers and navigators
had little idea of where their rivals might be as they
ploughed, day in day out, through the vast oceans. During
the first race, communication between the fleet and
organisers was based on a weekly position report to a local
coast guard, but from 1993-94, satellite equipment enabled
the yachts to file their position every six hours. This meant
that although boats were not necessarily in sight of each
other, rival skippers were able to follow and track every
move when necessary. In effect, this vast ocean race, where
yachts can race for days on end for thousands of miles and
not once see another competitor, has become, in this sense,
more like a fiercely fought dinghy race performed on any
local stretch of water.
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 1

1973-74 A ‘CORINTHIAN ADVENTURE’
2 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
When the first gun was fired on September 8 1973, 17
boats of sizes ranging from 80’ to 32’ from seven
countries crossed the start line just east of Portsmouth
Harbour, but only 14 were to complete the circumnavigation.
Sir Alec Rose, who, five years previously, had sailed round
the world single-handed, stopping only twice, fired the first
ever starting gun. Only four legs were staged – Portsmouth
to Cape Town; Cape Town to Sydney; Sydney to Rio de
Janeiro and from Rio the fleet raced back to Portsmouth.
The whole race lasted 144 days with the 77’ Ketch, Great
Britain II, skippered by Chay Blyth and crewed by
paratroopers, first to finish on 9 April 1974. The race was
won on handicap by the smaller 65’ Mexican entry, Sayula II,
skippered by Ramon Carlin but with a multi-national crew,
which took 152 days to complete the course (133 days on
corrected time).
This first race was not without its tragedies. In the Southern
Ocean, where no man had raced yachts before, three
yachtsmen were lost. One, Paul Waterhouse, was a British
Army Corporal competing on the Italian Swan 55. On
November 19 1973, when the yacht broached during a
strong gale in the Roaring Forties, Waterhouse was flung

over the side, and in spite of a four-hour search, he was
never found. The second fatality occurred just a few days
later when Dominique Guillet, on the French entry, 33
Export, went missing during a sail change in heavy weather.
Although he had been wearing a harness, he too, was never
found. In January 1974, while in the Tasman Sea, Bernie
Hosking on Great Britain II, fell overboard during a
‘Southerly Buster’. Again, in spite of an intensive search, his
body was never recovered.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 27,000nm
Leg 1 PORTSMOUTH TO CAPE TOWN.
Commenced September 8, 1973.
Distance 6,650 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO SYDNEY.
Commenced November 7, 1973.
Distance 6,550 nm
Leg 3 SYDNEY TO RIO DE JANEIRO.
Commenced December 29, 1973.
Distance 8,370 nm
Leg 4 RIO DE JANEIRO TO PORTSMOUTH.
The last leg was run as a pursuit race to reduce lag
time between the first and the last boat into port.
The boats set sail between March 6 and 11, 1974.
Distance 5,430 nm
We knew before the voyage began that the experience would change us all and I
believe this has proved to be the case. CHAY BLYTH
LEFT TO RIGHT.
PEN DUICK VI CRASHING
THROUGH THE WAVES.
RAMON CARLIN (MEXICO),
WEALTHY OWNER/SKIPPER
OF THE ONLY MEXICAN
ENTRY EVER IN THE
WHITBREAD – A BOAT
CREWED MAINLY BY
MEMBERS OF CARLIN’S
FAMILY.
SAYULA II SURVIVED A
CAPSIZE TO BECOME AN
UNEXPECTED BUT POPULAR
WINNER.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/ALISTAIR BLACK,
PPL/BOB FISHER
1973-74 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) CORRECTED TIME*
1 SAYULA II MEXICO RAMON CARLIN 133 DAYS 13 HOURS
2 ADVENTURE UNITED KINGDOM PATRICK BRYANS
MALCOLM SKENE
GEORGE VALLINGS
ROY MULLENDER
135 DAYS 8 HOURS
3 GRAND LOUIS FRANCE ANDRÉ VIANT 138 DAYS 15 HOURS
4 KRITER FRANCE JACK GROUT
MICHAEL MALINOVSKY
ALAIN GLIKSMAN
141 DAYS 2 HOURS
5 GUIA ITALY GIORGIO FALCK 142 DAYS 19 HOURS
6 GREAT BRITAIN II UNITED KINGDOM CHAY BLYTH 144 DAYS 11 HOURS
7 SECOND LIFE UNITED KINGDOM RODDY AINSLIE 150 DAYS 8 HOURS
8 CSERB ITALY DOI MALINGRI 155 DAYS 7 HOURS
9 BRITISH SOLDIER UNITED KINGDOM JAMES MYATT 156 DAYS 21 HOURS
10 TAURANGA ITALY ERIC PASCOLI 156 DAYS 22 HOURS
11 COPERNICUS POLAND ZYGFRYD PERLICKI 166 DAYS 19 HOURS
12 33 EXPORT FRANCE JEAN-PIERRE MILLET
DOMINQUE GUILLET
175 DAYS 22 HOURS
13 OTAGO POLAND ZDZISLAW PIENKAWA 178 DAYS 9 HOURS
14 PETER VON DANZIG GERMANY REINHARD LAUCHT 179 DAYS 15 HOURS
DNF PEN DUICK VI FRANCE ERIC TABARLY –
DNF BURTON CUTTER UNITED KINGDOM LESLIE WILLIAMS
ALAN SMITH
–
DNF JAKARANDA SOUTH AFRICA JOHN GOODWIN –
DNF CONCORDE FRANCE PIERRE CHASSIN –
DNF PEN DUICK III FRANCE M. CUIKLINSKI –
*Corrected time takes the handicap into account
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 3

1977-78 ‘SAFETY FIRST’
4 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
Tragedies apart, the race was a huge success, and one of the
main lessons learnt for the next race was that survival in
these most exacting conditions was just as important as speed.
Whitbread renewed their sponsorship and it was decided to
repeat the event every four years. The next race ran from August
1977 to March 1978 and again staged four legs, only this time
the port of Auckland was used instead of Sydney. The success of
the first race brought more entries looking for the glamour of the
experience, and some boats were designed especially for this
race and there was growing international interest.
Once again, Portsmouth hosted the start and finish. 15 yachts
from six countries embarked on the circumnavigation and all
completed the course. Safety regulations included the
compulsory fitting of jackstays in the hope of preventing future
deaths. By clipping their safety harnesses to the jackstay,
crewmembers would be far less likely to be separated from the
boat if swept overboard.
Three of the boats had completed in the previous race; Great
Britain II, this time skippered by Rob James with 16 fare paying
crew, 33 Export, re-rigged to a fractional sloop, and with the
youngest skipper, 23-year-old Alain Gabbay; and Adventure,
once again entered as a Ministry of Defence training yacht

causing controversy with large crew changes. Great Britain II
once again took line honours at the finish, after 134 days, but
victory on handicap went to a Dutchman, Cornelis van
Rietschoten, on the 65’ ketch Flyer, which took 136 days to
complete the voyage but 119 days on corrected time.
This race was notable for the fact that Clare Francis became the
first woman to skipper a Whitbread entry, the Swan 65 ADC
Accutrac. Skip Novak made his Whitbread debut as navigator
onboard King’s Legend, the third Swan 65 entered, the other
being Disque d’Or.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 26,780nm
Leg 1 PORTSMOUTH TO CAPE TOWN.
Commenced August 27 1977.
Distance 6,650 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO AUCKLAND.
Commenced October 25 1977.
Distance 7,300 nm
Leg 3 AUCKLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO.
Commenced December 26 1977.
Distance 7,400 nm
Leg 4 RIO DE JANEIRO TO PORTSMOUTH.
Commenced February 22, 1978.
Distance 5,430 nm
It was not really about racing back then, although we did race hard.
Adventure and seeing the world was the real attraction. SKIP NOVAK
LEFT TO RIGHT.
ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON
AT THE HELM OF HEATH’S
CONDOR.
CORNELIS VAN
RIETSCHOTEN - SKIPPER OF
THE DUTCH YACHT FLYER.
HE DEMONSTRATED THAT
GOOD ORGANIZATION
WAS THE KEY TO SUCCESS.
THE DUTCH YACHT FLYER IN
THE SOLENT AFTER
WINNING THE 1977-78
WHITBREAD ROUND THE
WORLD RACE.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/ALISTAIR BLACK,
PPL/BARRY PICKTHALL, PPL/BOB FISHER
1977-78 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) CORRECTED TIME*
1 FLYER NETHERLANDS CORNELIS VAN RIETSCHOTEN 119 DAYS 1 HOUR
2 KING’S LEGEND UNITED KINGDOM NICK RATCLIFFE
MIKE CLANCY
121 DAYS 11 HOURS
3 TRAITÉ DE ROME EEC PHILIPPE HANIN 121 DAYS 18 HOURS
4 DISQUE D’OR SWITZERLAND PIERRE FEHLMANN 122 DAYS 10 HOURS
5 ADC ACCUTRAC UNITED KINGDOM CLARE FRANCIS 126 DAYS 20 HOURS
6 GAULOISES II FRANCE ERIC LOIZEAU 127 DAYS 7 HOURS
7 ADVENTURE UNITED KINGDOM JAMES WATTS, DAVID LESLIE
IAN BAILEY-WILLMOT
ROBIN DUCHESNE
128 DAYS 2 HOURS
8 NEPTUNE FRANCE BERNARD DEGUY 130 DAYS 11 HOURS
9 B&B ITALIA ITALY CORRADO DI MAJO 132 DAYS 2 HOURS
10 33 EXPORT FRANCE ALAIN GABBAY (31 min) 133 DAYS 00 HOURS
11 TIELSA NETHERLANDS DIRK NAUTA (36 min) 133 DAYS 00 HOURS
12 GREAT BRITAIN II UNITED KINGDOM ROB JAMES 134 DAYS 10 HOURS
13 DEBENHAMS UNITED KINGDOM JOHN RIDGWAY 135 DAYS 19 HOURS
14 JAPY-HERMES FRANCE JEAN MICHEL VIANT 143 DAYS 6 HOURS
15 HEATH’S CONDOR UNITED KINGDOM LESLIE WILLIAMS
ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON
144 DAYS 00 HOURS
*Corrected time takes the handicap into account
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 5

1981-82 FLYER’S ENCORE
6 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
The ‘Flying Dutchman’, Cornelis van Rietschoten, returned on
a new Flyer, which was 76’ in length, with the specific aim to
win the race on both elapsed and corrected time. This he
achieved, crossing the finish line 119 days after the fleet had set
out from Portsmouth in August 1981. Four legs were once again
staged but instead of Rio de Janeiro, the third port of call was
Mar de Plata, in Argentina.
Twenty-nine yachts from 20 countries competed in the 1981-82
event, but nine failed to complete the course. The variation in
competing yachts was bracketed by two British entries,
spanning the biggest – FCF Challenger at 80’ LOA, all the way
down to Bubblegum, at 43’ LOA.
With Flyer dominating the event, van Rietschoten became a
national hero and members of the Dutch Royal Family
greeted the whole crew when they returned to Holland. The
Dutchman’s intense preparation for this and the previous
race, both in the building of the yachts and in the shore work
during stopovers, was widely acclaimed, praised and copied
in the years ahead. His determination to succeed was so
great that not even a heart attack during the second leg
could deter his ambition.

Prior to the start it was thought that one of the most serious
challengers to Flyer would be Peter Blake’s 68’ Ceramco New
Zealand. Peter Blake was in his third race and although Ceramco
won two of the four legs, including the final leg, Blake’s
challenge was scuppered shortly after it began when he was
dismasted on the first leg. With some inspired seamanship,
Ceramco was able to limp into Cape Town only 11 days behind
Flyer, but the New Zealand entry was never able to make up for
lost time. Blake’s day was yet to come.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 26.095nm
Leg 1 PORTSMOUTH TO CAPE TOWN.
Commenced August 8, 1981.
Distance 6,650 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO AUCKLAND.
Commenced September 30 1981.
Distance 7,300 nm
Leg 3 AUCKLAND TO MAR DEL PLATA.
Commenced December 26 1981.
Distance 6,175 nm
Leg 4 MAR DEL PLATA TO PORTSMOUTH.
Commenced February 27, 1982.
Distance 5,970 nm
Everywhere else on the globe, there are land masses to check the sea’s progress. But
down south, the oceans roll unobstructed all the way around the world. PETER BLAKE
LEFT TO RIGHT.
WITH TWO JIBS WINGED
OUT AND NO MAINSAIL,
FLYER IS STABLE SPEEDING
DOWNWIND IN THE
SOUTHERN OCEAN.
CERAMCO NEW ZEALAND
ARRIVES IN AUKLAND
A YOUNG GRANT DALTON
(SECOND FROM RIGHT)
TAKES THE BIG WAVE IN
STRIDE ABOARD CERAMCO
NEW ZEALAND.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/ONNE VAN DER WAL
1981-82 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) CORRECTED TIME*
1 FLYER NETHERLANDS CORNELIS VAN RIETSCHOTEN 119 DAYS 1 HOUR
2 CHARLES HEIDSIECK III FRANCE ALAIN GABBAY 120 DAYS 7 HOURS
3 KRITER XI FRANCE ANDRÉ VIANT 120 DAYS 10 HOURS
4 DISQUE D’OR III SWITZERLAND PIERRE FEHLMANN 123 DAYS 11 HOURS
5 OUTWARD BOUND NEW ZEALAND DIGBY TAYLOR 124 DAYS 11 HOURS
6 XARGO III SOUTH AFRICA PADDA KUTTEL 124 DAYS 19 HOURS
7 MOR BIHAN FRANCE PHILLIPE POUPON 125 DAYS 15 HOURS
8 BERGE VIKING NORWAY PEDER LUNDE 125 DAYS 16 HOURS
9 ALASKA EAGLE UNITED STATES SKIP NOVAK, NEIL BERGT 126 DAYS 10 HOURS
10 EUROMARCHE FRANCE ERIC TABARLY 126 DAYS 23 HOURS
11 CERAMCO NEW ZEALAND NEW ZEALAND PETER BLAKE 127 DAYS 17 HOURS
12 SKOPBANK OF FINLAND FINLAND KENNETH GAHMBERG 128 DAYS 15 HOURS
13 ROLLYGO ITALY GIORGIO FALCK 129 DAYS 20 HOURS
14 TRAITÉ DE ROME EEC ANTONIO CHIOATTO 130 DAYS 23 HOURS
15 CROKY BELGIUM GUSTAAF VERSLUYS 133 DAYS 23 HOURS
16 FCF CHALLENGER UNITED KINGDOM LESLIE WILLIAMS 138 DAYS 15 HOURS
17 UNITED FRIENDLY UNITED KINGDOM CHAY BLYTH 141 DAYS 10 HOURS
18 WALROSS III BERLIN GERMANY JEAN-MICHEL VIANT 143 DAYS 19 HOURS
19 LICOR 43 SPAIN JOAQUIN COELLO 160 DAYS 2 HOURS
20 ILGAGOMMA ITALY ROBERTO VIANELLO 160 DAYS 9 HOURS
DNF EUROPEAN UNI. BELGIUM BELGIUM JEAN BLONDIAU –
DNF 33 EXPORT FRANCE PHILLIPE SCHAFF –
DNF GAULOISES III FRANCE ERIC LOIZEAU –
DNF LA BARCA LABORATORIO ITALY CLAUDIO STAMPI –
DNF SAVE VENICE ITALY DOI MALINGRI –
DNF VIVANAPOLI ITALY BEPPE PANADA –
DNF SCANDINAVIAN SWEDEN REINO ENGQVIST –
DNF SWEDISH ENTRY SWEDEN MOGENS BUGGE –
DNF BUBBLEGUM UNITED KINGDOM IAIN McGOWN-FYFE –
*Corrected time takes the handicap into account
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 7

1985-86 STRENGTH OF QUALITY
8 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
The fourth Whitbread Race consisted of mostly sponsored
yachts, no military service entries and no privately funded
entries, with the possible exception of Simon Le Bon’s Drum, and
SAS Baiai Viking, mostly private despite a sponsored name.
Although there was a smaller entry of 15 yachts from 10
countries, the lack of quantity was more than made up for in
strength of quality with all the yachts, including the new 80’
maxis, being specifically built for this or an earlier race. Once
again four legs were staged but Mar del Plata was replaced by
Punta del Este in Uruguay. This was also the last time for some
years that a South African port, Cape Town, was used, although
it was reinstated as a stopover port in the 1997-98 race.
Most of the 15 entries had paid attention to previous successful
Whitbread contenders, and many were maxi-rated, but the
winner turned out to be one of the smallest boats in the race,
carrying the fewest crew (eight). The 58’ French sloop, L’Esprit
d’Equipe was actually the 1981-92 contender, 33 Export, and
was skippered by Lionel Pean. She won the race on handicap,
crossing the line on corrected time 111 days after leaving
Portsmouth (132 days elapsed time). Pierre Fehlmann, on the 80’
maxi, UBS Switzerland, proved to be the fastest boat round on
elapsed time, finishing 117 days after the start.

Among the fleet was Simon Le Bon’s Drum, skippered by Skip
Novak. Drum had weathered the vicious 1985 Fastnet race, but
had spectacularly lost her keel and rolled over. The Whitbread’s
later start, on September 28th, combined with tremendous
effort, had allowed Drum to be ready for the start of the race
which was to be the last time the Whitbread Trophy was
awarded on corrected time.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 26,740nm
Leg 1 PORTSMOUTH TO CAPE TOWN
Commenced September 28, 1985
Distance 7,350 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO AUCKLAND
Commenced December 4 1985
Distance 7,300 nm
Leg 3 AUCKLAND TO PUNTA DEL ESTE.
Commenced February 14 1986
Distance 6,215 nm
Leg 4 PUNTA DEL ESTE TO PORTSMOUTH
Commenced April 9, 1986
Distance 5,875 nm
That’s what the Whitbread Race is all about... sticking it out in bad times as well as in the
good... and taking it one leg, one day, and then even one watch at a time SKIP NOVAK
LEFT TO RIGHT.
FOR THE BRAVE CREW
MEMBERS WHO CLIMBS
THE MAST THERE IS A
REWARD: IT IS QUIET
ALOFT.
LIONEL PÉAN, WINNING
SKIPPER OF THE 1985-86
WHITBREAD.
L’ESPRIT D’EQUIPE FROM
FRANCE WINS THE 1985-86
WHITBREAD.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/BARRY PICKTHALL,
PPL/BOB FISHER, RICK TOMLINSON
1985-86 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) CORRECTED TIME*
1 L’ESPRIT D’EQUIPE FRANCE LIONEL PÉAN 111 DAYS 23 HOURS
2 PHILIPS INNOVATOR NETHERLANDS DIRK NAUTA 112 DAYS 21 HOURS
3 FAZER FINLAND FINLAND MICHAEL BERNER 115 DAYS 00 HOURS
4 UBS SWITZERLAND SWITZERLAND PIERRE FEHLMANN 117 DAYS 4 HOURS
5 RUCANOR TRISTAR BELGIUM GUSTAF VERSLUYS
ANN LIPPENS
118 DAYS 9 HOURS
6 FORTUNA LIGHTS SPAIN JAVIER VISIERS
JORGIE BRUFAU
ANTONIO GUIU
121 DAYS 00 HOURS
7 LION NEW ZEALAND NEW ZEALAND PETER BLAKE 121 DAYS 7 HOURS
8 DRUM UNITED KINGDOM SKIP NOVAK 122 DAYS 6 HOURS
9 EQUITY & LAW NETHERLANDS PLEUN VAN DER LUGT 123 DAYS 6 HOURS
10 COTE D’OR BELGIUM ERIC TABARLY 125 DAYS 19 HOURS
11 SHADOW OF SWITZERLAND SWITZERLAND OTTO & NORA
ZEHENDER-MUELLER
128 DAYS 11 HOURS
12 NORSK DATA GB UNITED KINGDOM BOB SALMON 136 DAYS 1 HOUR
13 SAS BAIA VIKING DENMARK JESPER NORSK 144 DAYS 18 HOURS
DNF NZI ENTERPRISE NEW ZEALAND DIGBY TAYLOR –
DNF ATLANTIC PRIVATEER UNITED STATES PADDA KUTTEL –
*Corrected time takes the handicap into account
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 9

1989-90 ‘BIG RED’
10 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
The 1989-90 race will long be remembered as the time when
the event came of age in terms of the massive publicity it
achieved for the remarkable feat of seamanship shown by New
Zealand’s Peter Blake, who, on the 84’ Bruce Farr designed
ketch, Steinlager, claimed line honours on every one of the six
legs, and for the fact there was the first all-women entry,
skippered by Tracy Edwards, on the 58’ sloop, Maiden (the 1981
entry Disque d’Or). It was also the first time six legs were staged.
Twenty-three boats from 13 countries crossed the start line at
Southampton and, for the first time, the fleet sailed across the
Atlantic on the first leg to the South American port of Punta del
Este. From there it went down into the Southern Ocean to
Fremantle, from Fremantle to Auckland, then back to Punta del
Este, up to Fort Lauderdale and, finally back to Southampton.
This race, which saw the first entry from the Soviet Union, Fazisi,
also suffered a fatality on the second leg. In the big Southern
Ocean seas the 80’ British entry, Creighton’s Naturally, skippered
by John Chittenden, broached and two members of the crew,
Anthony Phillips and Bart Van den Dwey were swept overboard.
Both were wearing life jackets and equipped with flares and
personal radio beacons and both were found and brought back
on board. Van den Dwey was successfully resuscitated, but
Phillips never regained consciousness. It is believed that he hit his
head as he went overboard and was unconscious when he hit the
water. He was buried at sea.

Despite the dramas, nothing could detract from Blake’s personal
triumph in his fifth successive Whitbread and Southampton
Water was awash with spectator boats as the Kiwi boat, known
as the ‘Big Red’, crossed the finish line after 128 days.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 32,018nm
Leg 1 SOUTHAMPTON TO PUNTA DEL ESTE
Commenced September 2 1989
Distance 5,938 nm
Leg 2 PUNTA DEL ESTE TO FREMANTLE
Commenced October 28 1989
Distance 7,260 nm
Leg 3 FREMANTLE TO AUCKLAND
Commenced December 23 1989
Distance 3,272 nm
Leg 4 AUCKLAND TO PUNTA DEL ESTE
Commenced February 4 1990
Distance 6,255 nm
Leg 5 PUNTA DEL ESTE TO FORT LAUDERDALE
Commenced March 17 1990
Distance 5,475 nm
Leg 6 FORT LAUDERDALE TO SOUTHAMPTON
Commenced May 5 1990
Distance 3,818 nm
It took him five attempts to win the Whitbread during which he experienced every set back
from near sinking to dismasting before everything went right. CORNELIS VAN RIETSCHOTEN
LEFT TO RIGHT.
THE CARD DURING THE
FIRST LEG OF THE
WHITBREAD 1989-90.
PETER BLAKE HOISTS THE
WINNERS TROPHY.
STEINLAGER 2 WINS THE
1989-90 WHITBREAD.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/BOB FISHER,
RICK TOMLINSON, ROGER LEAN-BERCOE
1989-90 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) CORRECTED TIME*
1 STEINLAGER 2 NEW ZEALAND PETER BLAKE 128 DAYS 9 HOURS
2 FISHER & PAYKEL NZ NEW ZEALAND GRANT DALTON 129 DAYS 21 HOURS
3 MERIT SWITZERLAND PIERRE FEHLMANN 130 DAYS 10 HOURS
4 ROTHMANS UNITED KINGDOM LAWRIE SMITH 131 DAYS 4 HOURS
5 THE CARD SWEDEN ROGER NILSON 135 DAYS 7 HOURS
6 CHARLES JOURDAN FRANCE ALAIN GABBAY 136 DAYS 15 HOURS
7 FORTUNA EXTRA LIGHTS SPAIN JAVIER DE LA GAUDERA 137 DAYS 8 HOURS
JAN SANTANA, JOSÉ LUIS DORESTE
8 GATORADE ITALY GIORGIO FALCK
HERVÉ JAN PREIRE SICOUIN
138 DAYS 14 HOURS
9 UNION BANK OF FINLAND FINLAND LUDDE INGVALL 138 DAYS 16 HOURS
10 BELMONT FINLAND II FINLAND HARRY HARKIMO 139 DAYS 4 HOURS
11 FAZISI USSR ALEXI GRISCHENKO
SKIP NOVAK, VALERI ALEXEEV
139 DAYS 9 HOURS
12 NCB IRELAND IRELAND JOE ENGLISH 139 DAYS 19 HOURS
13 BRITISH SATQUOTE DEFENDER UNITED KINGDOM FRANK ESSON
COLIN WATKINS
143 DAYS 12 HOURS
14 EQUITY & LAW II NETHERLANDS DIRK NAUTA 148 DAYS 23 HOURS
15 LIVERPOOL ENTERPRISE UNITED KINGDOM BOB SALMON 151 DAYS 4 HOURS
16 CREIGHTONS NATURALLY UNITED KINGDOM JOHN CHITTENDON 162 DAYS 6 HOURS
17 ESPRIT DE LIBERTÉ FRANCE PATRICK TABARLY 164 DAYS 21 HOURS
18 MAIDEN UNITED KINGDOM TRACY EDWARDS 167 DAYS 3 HOURS
19 SCHLUSSEL VON BREMEN GERMANY ROLF RENKEN 167 DAYS 19 HOURS
HAM MÜELLER-RÖHLOK, JOCHEN ORGELMANN
WILHELM-OTTO BECK, PETER WEIDNER
20 WITH INTEGRITY UNITED KINGDOM ANDY COGHILL 170 DAYS 16 HOURS
21 LA POSTE FRANCE DANIEL MALLÉ 181 DAYS 22 HOURS
DNF RUCANOR SPORT BELGIUM BRUNO DUBOIS –
DNF MARTELA OF FINLAND MARKKU WILKERI –
*Corrected time takes the handicap into account
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 11

1993-94 REWRITING THE RECORD BOOKS
12 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
The 1993-94 Whitbread was a two-class race with world
champion match racers fighting it out around the world on
the new Whitbread 60 class of flat out ocean racers. Maxi yachts
were still permitted and raced in a separate division, but things
had changed considerably in the four years since Peter Blake had
set round the world records with his win on the maxi Steinlager
2. This Whitbread was now a flat-out professional yacht racing
effort.
The course remained the same as the previous race and five
Maxis and 10 W60s crossed the start line on September 25th
although one of the 60s, Odessa, did not actually cross the start
line until just over one week after the gun. Two days into the
race, the maxi Fortuna skippered by Britain’s Lawrie Smith
withdrew after breaking her mizzenmast. It was a crushing blow
for Smith and his crew but, Smith bounced back for the second
leg, at the helm of the W60 Intrum Justitia, replacing Roger
Nilson. Smith went on to win the second leg and later broke the
world monohull 24-hour record, covering 428.7 nautical miles on
the leg between Auckland and Punta del Este.
Among the W60 class was Heineken, skippered by American
Dawn Riley. Riley was part of Tracy Edwards’ crew onboard
Maiden in the 1989-90 race and this was the second all-female
boat to compete in The Whitbread.

The victorious W60 was Yamaha, skippered by Kiwi, Ross Field,
while Grant Dalton’s New Zealand Endeavour won the maxi
class. Dalton hadn’t beaten the W60s into the finish at
Southampton, but he had taken eight days off Peter Blake’s
round the world record, however, next time it would be just
Whitbread 60s, paired down and all about speed, all the time.
THE ROUTE Total Distance 31,975nm
Leg 1 SOUTHAMPTON TO PUNTA DEL ESTE
Commenced September 25 1993
Distance 5,938 nm
Leg 2 PUNTA DEL ESTE TO FREMANTLE
Commenced November 13 1993
Distance 7,558 nm
Leg 3 FREMANTLE TO AUCKLAND
Commenced January 8 1994
Distance 3,272 nm
Leg 4 AUCKLAND TO PUNTA DEL ESTE
Commenced February 19 1984
Distance 5,914 nm
Leg 5 PUNTA DEL ESTE TO FORT LAUDERDALE
Commenced April 2 1994
Distance 5,475 nm
Leg 6 FORT LAUDERDALE TO SOUTHAMPTON
Commenced May 21 1994
Distance 3,818 nm
It is not commonly known that New Zealand Endeavour was the only yacht in the
Whitbread fleet that didn’t change its crew during the race. GRANT DALTON
LEFT TO RIGHT.
IT TAKES A LOT OF
STAMINA TO STEER FOR
LONG PERIODS OF TIME.
GRANT DALTON WAS
HAPPY WITH HIS TEAM’S
PERFORMANCE
NEW ZEALAND
ENDEAVOUR FEATURES A
CLIPPER BOW TO EXTEND
THE BOAT’S SAIL AREA.
PHOTOS: PPL, PPL/MARK PEPPER,
RICK TOMLINSON
1993-94 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER ELAPSED TIME
MAXI CLASS
1 NEW ZEALAND ENDEAVOUR NEW ZEALAND GRANT DALTON 120 DAYS 5 HOURS
2 MERIT CUP SWITZERLAND PIERRE FEHLMANN 121 DAYS 2 HOURS
3 LA POSTE FRANCE ERIC TABARLY 123 DAYS 22 HOURS
4 URUGUAY NATURAL URUGUAY GUSTAVO VANZINI 144 DAYS 20 HOURS
WHITBREAD 60 CLASS
1 YAMAHA JAPAN ROSS FIELD 120 DAYS 14 HOURS
2 INTRUM JUSTITIA EUROPE LAWRIE SMITH 121 DAYS 5 HOURS
3 GALICIA ’93 PESCANOVA SPAIN JAVIER GANDARA 122 DAYS 6 HOURS
4 WINSTON UNITED STATES BRAD BUTTERWORTH 122 DAYS 9 HOURS
5 TOKIO JAPAN CHRIS DICKSON 128 DAYS 16 HOURS
6 BROOKSFIELD ITALY GUIDO MAISTO 130 DAYS 4 HOURS
7 HETMAN SAHAIDACHNY UKRAINE EUGENE PLATON 135 DAYS 23 HOURS
8 DOLPHIN & YOUTH UNITED KINGDOM MATT HUMPHRIES 137 DAYS 21 HOURS
9 HEINEKEN UNITED STATES DAWN RILEY 138 DAYS 16 HOURS
10 ODESSA UKRAINE ANATOLY VERBA 158 DAYS 4 HOURS
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 13

1997-98 THE VOLVO TROPHY
14 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
The seventh and final race under the Whitbread banner
changed the public face of ocean racing forever. The sheer
excellence of the on board video footage and the quality and
quantity of the daily emails from the crews ensured a huge media
interest worldwide.
For the first time, the fleet was made up of one class only, the
Whitbread 60, and a fleet of 10 set off from Southampton on
21st September, vying for the Volvo Trophy. A complicated
points scoring system replaced elapsed time. One important
effect of the W60 was its attraction to big-name, round-thebuoys
racers. The boat provided a challenge they could not
resist. Dennis Conner was once again trying his skill, as was Chris
Dickson. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Paul Cayard, whose
bona fides as a Star boat champion and America’s Cup
competitor hardly seemed to suit the rigours of ocean racing.
Some did not take him seriously.

It was not until a third of the race had gone by that a definite
pecking order had been established and, by this time, Paul
Cayard with EF Language had won two legs and Swedish
Match/Gunnar Krantz had taken the third. Records, too, had
been set. Silk Cut/Lawrie Smith, set the 24 hour world record for
a monohull during leg two of 449.1 nautical miles but her
challenge for overall glory fell apart in the southern ocean on leg
five when her mast came down.
In the end, Paul Cayard demonstrated that lack of experience in
ocean racing was no handicap. By the end of the seventh leg he
had opened up a virtually unassailable lead on the points table
and interest lay with the battle for second place. This was won,
at the final hurdle, by Merit Cup/Grant Dalton with Swedish
Match/Gunnar Krantz taking third place.
PHOTOS: ALLSPORT, MIKE
HEWITT/ALLSPORT
LEFT TO RIGHT.
Weren’t you scared? I am often asked. Yes, I was. Many times. And that’s fine...
CREW MEMBERS
TRIMMING SAILS
ONBOARD MERIT CUP.
PAUL CAYARD, SKIPPER
OF THE WINNING
YACHT, EF LANGUAGE.
EF LANGUAGE
CROSSES THE
CHANNEL DURING THE
FINAL LEG OF THE
WHITBREAD ROUND
THE WORLD RACE.
1997-98 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) POINTS
1 EF LANGUAGE SWEDEN PAUL CAYARD 836
2 MERIT CUP MONACO GRANT DALTON 698
3 SWEDISH MATCH SWEDEN GUNNAR KRANTZ 689
4 INNOVATION KVAERNER NORWAY KNUT FROSTAD 633
5 SILK CUT UNITED KINGDOM LAWRIE SMITH 630
6 CHESSIE RACING UNITED STATES GEORGE COLLINS 613
7 TOSHIBA UNITED STATES DENNIS CONNER
PAUL STANDBRIDGE
528
8 BRUNELSUNERGY NETHERLANDS HANS BOUSCHOLTE
ROY HEINER
415
9 EF EDUCATION UNITED STATES CHRISTINE GUILLOU 275
DNF AMERICA’S CHALLENGE UNITED STATES ROSS FIELD 48
THE ROUTE Total Distance 31,600nm
Leg 1 SOUTHAMPTON TO CAPE TOWN
Commenced September 21, 1997
Distance 7,350 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO FREMANTLE
Commenced November 11 1997
Distance 4,600 nm
Leg 3 FREMANTLE TO SYDNEY
Commenced December 13 1997
Distance 2,250 nm
Leg 4 SYDNEY TO AUCKLAND
Commenced January 4 1998
Distance 1,270 nm
Leg 5 AUCKLAND TO SAO SEBASTIAO
Commenced February 1 1998
Distance 6,670 nm
KNUT FROSTAD
Leg 6 SAO SEBASTIAO TO FORT LAUDERDALE
Commenced March 14 1998
Distance 4,750 nm
Leg 7 FORT LAUDERDALE TO BALTIMORE
Commenced April 19 1998
Distance 870 nm
Leg 8 ANNAPOLIS TO LA ROCHELLE
Commenced May 3 1998
Distance 3,390 nm
Leg 9 LA ROCHELLE TO SOUTHAMPTON
Commenced May 22 1998
Distance 450 nm
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 15

2001-02 THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE
16 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
Eight teams, including an all female team, were on the
starting line on September 23 for the first race under the
Volvo banner which will be remembered for its drama. Roy
Heiner, the skipper of the highly-fancied Assa Abloy was
replaced by watch captain Neal McDonald after finishing in fifth
place on leg one. Illbruck, which won the leg, almost sank on leg
two when an inspection hatch worked loose and she shipped
gallons of water. Tyco was forced to retire from leg two with
severe rudder failure.
Keith Kilpatrick/Amer Sports One was sick and confined to his
bunk but thankfully The Royal Australian Air Force came to the
rescue with an airdrop of medical supplies and Kilpatrick was
later transferred to a waiting fishing boat near Eclipse Island,
Western Australia. He was never to sail again on Amer Sports
One, which, in the closing hours of the leg, suffered a spectacular
broach, pinning the boat on her side for five minutes off the
entrance to Sydney Harbour. Skipper Grant Dalton, lying injured
in his bunk, was powerless to help as the boat flailed hopelessly
on her side.
Just hours into the Sydney to Auckland leg, a huge waterspout
threatened the fleet. Everyone got away unscathed, although
SEB later suffered rudder failure and retired. Lisa McDonald’s
crew broke their forestay and also hit something suspicious,
delaying their restart from the Hobart pitstop and on to
Auckland.

The Southern Ocean lived up to its reputation and from
Auckland to Rio the fleet encountered the worst ice they had
ever seen. SEB was dismasted and limped in to Ushuaia under
jury rig. Hours after the restart from Rio de Janeiro, SEB collided
with illbruck and arrived in Miami with a jagged look to her bow.
A protest was filed but not upheld.
During the dash across the Atlantic illbruck turned in a near
faultless leg, and, clocking up 484 nautical miles, they beat SEB’s
24-hour record from the Southern Ocean. Disaster struck Lisa
McDonald’s Amer Sports Too, when her mast broke and ended
her team’s involvement in the leg in an instant. Leg eight to
Gothenburg was an enthralling battle and resulted in the closest
finish in the history of the race with five boats finishing within
seven minutes after 1,075 miles of racing.
The day of the start from Gothenburg had both sailors and
commentators shaking their heads in disbelief. The spectator
fleet on the water and the crowds lining the shore outdid
anything seen on the America’s Cup courses or Sydney to
Hobart starts. It may even have outdone the end of the final
race of the America’s Cup in Fremantle. If Gothenburg had been
a phenomenon, the finish in Kiel had to be seen to be believed.
A huge crowd, was there to applaud them all, but the winner’s
enclosure belonged to John Kostecki and his German boat
illbruck.
It’s been a long eventful nine months with many ups and downs but it has been, as
these races always are - unforgettable STEVE HAYLES
LEFT TO RIGHT.
THE FLEET STARTS CLOSE
TO THE SHORE IN CAPE
TOWN.
JOHN KOSTECKI
VICTORIOUS.
ILLBRUCK TRAINING IN
SYDNEY.
PHOTOS: DANIEL FORSTER, JON NASH,
RICK TOMLINSON
2001-02 RACE COURSE AND RESULTS
POSITION YACHT NATIONALITY SKIPPER(S) POINTS
1 ILLBRUCK CHALLENGE GERMANY JOHN KOSTECKI 61
2 ASSA ABLOY SWEDEN NEAL McDONALD 55
3 AMER SPORTS ONE ITALY/FINLAND GRANT DALTON 44
4 TYCO BERMUDA KEVIN SHOEBRIDGE 42
5 NEWS CORP AUSTRALIA JEZ FANSTONE 41
6 DJUICE NORWAY KNUT FROSTAD 33
7 SEB SWEDEN GUNNAR KRANTZ 32
8 AMER SPORTS TOO ITALY/FINLAND LISA McDONALD 16
THE ROUTE Total Distance 31,600nm
Leg 1 SOUTHAMPTON TO CAPE TOWN
Commenced September 23, 2001
Distance 7,350 nm
Leg 2 CAPE TOWN TO SYDNEY
Commenced November 11, 2001
Distance 6,550 nm
Leg 3 SYDNEY TO AUCKLAND
Commenced December 26, 2001
Distance 2,050 nm
Leg 4 AUCKLAND TO RIO DE JANEIRO
Commenced January 27, 2001
Distance 6,700 nm
Leg 5 RIO DE JANEIRO TO MIAMI
Commenced March 9, 2002
Distance 4,450 nm
Leg 6 MIAMI TO BALTIMORE
Commenced April 14, 2002
Distance 875 nm
Leg 7 ANNAPOLIS TO LA ROCHELLE
Commenced April 28, 2002
Distance 3,400 nm
Leg 8 LA ROCHELLE TO GÖTEBORG
Commenced May 25, 2002
Distance 1,075 nm
Leg 9 GÖTEBORG TO KIEL
Commenced June 8, 2002
Distance 250 nm
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 17

2005-06 THE ‘NEW’ VOLVO OCEAN RACE
THE FOUR ‘CORNER STONES’
After the huge success of the inaugural Volvo Ocean Race, known for 25 years as
The Whitbread, the next edition of the Volvo Ocean Race will start for the first time from
the Mediterranean in November 2005.
The first Volvo Ocean Race, which began in Southampton, England, in September 2001 and
finished in Kiel, Germany, in June 2002 was the most successful round the world race to date,
firmly establishing the event as one of the world’s premier sporting events. Racing was closer
than ever before, with new world speed records and a successful mix of short course and long
ocean racing legs. The Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 will build on this strong foundation with the
intention of producing the most consummate, all-round racing team the world has ever seen.
There are four pillars supporting our strategy:
• The Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 will be a world-class sporting event
• It will be an interesting and challenging event for the sailors
• It will be engaging and inspiring to sailing enthusiasts and the public alike
• It will present sponsors and syndicates with an even better value for investment
18 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
DJUICE DRAGONS

THE OBJECTIVES
REDUCE THE COSTS FOR THE CAMPAIGNS
In the last race, the campaign costs for some of the teams was up to USD20-25 million.
Although, without exception, sponsors now look upon it as a good investment, the intention
is to make it possible to reduce this amount to around USD15 million, or even lower, thereby
making the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 one of the most attractive sporting sponsorship
opportunities available.
Factors such as the total time span of the event, the number and length of each of the
stopovers, reduction in the number of sails, only allowing one boat per team, reduction in crew
members and standardised meteorological information being provided, will help to
achieve this.
IMPROVE THE MEDIA VALUE EVEN FURTHER
The media results from the 2001-02 race were impressive*, but improvements will be achieved
by a new design of boat, new team structures and in port racing which, coupled with an even
stronger media strategy, will significantly increase news and sport related media exposure.
Even more spectacular footage will be sent from a self contained media station within the boat,
which will assist with the quality of footage delivered.
MORE EFFICIENT STOPOVERS
Shorter, more attractive but fewer stopovers will lead to an enthusiastic port-side audience as
well as generating better interest from the general public, through generating increased media
* Please see the document Marketing through the Volvo Ocean Race
Crew work will have to be superb on the short races. At sea one mistake may cost
miles you may never regain GRANT DALTON
exposure. In each stopover, there will be a nine-day window beginning with an in port race,
the prize giving, the final preparation for the restart and the restart weekend itself.
CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT
As the premier ocean race, the event has always been on the forefront of development,
particularly when it comes to the yachts, the race concept itself and commercially. As can be
seen by the new model, we have chosen to continue this philosophy by allowing all members
of the sailing community to ‘buy in’ to the race, which will help to develop and evolve the sport
in general.
RESPECT FOR THE HERITAGE AND THE SPORTING ASPECTS
The Volvo Ocean Race is the ultimate symbol of man against nature, and a race with a great
heritage. Over the last 30 years, some of the most recognised all round sailors in the world,
such as Sir Peter Blake, Grant Dalton, Tracy Edwards, Paul Cayard, Dennis Conner and Chris
Dickson have taken part in this event, on their way to becoming international sporting
personalities. It has always been the race that every sailor has aspired to compete in, and we
wish to foster this ideal. Balancing the epic nature of the ocean legs, the in port fleet racing
will confront sailors with additional challenges they have not seen in the past, while conserving
the importance of the long ocean legs.
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 19

2005-06
20 HISTORY IN PROGRESS

THE NEW BOAT DESIGN
Innovation has always been the signature of this event and it was time to introduce a new
design of boat for the 2005-06 event. With development in mind, a forum of skippers,
designers, syndicate heads and representatives from the Volvo Ocean Race collated ideas on
what should be changed in the rule for the next event. There were many opinions as to what
the new yacht should look like and how it should perform; sadly for the V.O.60 rule, all agreed
that something new was required and the brand new, state-of-the art 70’ monohull race boat
was conceived. Maybe it is a shame to see the end of the use of the V.O.60s in this prestigious
event but, as with the development of other sporting events like Formula 1, it will be
remembered with pride and looked back on as the forerunner to many modern high-speed
racing yachts.
The race has become known for its stories of human endeavour, for the cutting edge design
of ocean racing yachts, for challenging and breaking world speed and distance records, for
pushing the development of hull shapes, keel, rudder and sail design, for utilising new
materials, for leading the world in on-board communications, for increasing the levels of yacht
safety and in the last event, the closeness of the racing.
The new, open design race boat will have a canting keel, a choice of one or two centerboards,
and a choice of one or two rudders. Above all, it will be very fast and exciting to sail. The
prescribed rule will remain relatively open, presenting a challenge and test for the designers,
thereby encouraging the development of even faster yachts.
For this size of boat, the overlimit could suggest a trade-off between
handling and performance ROB HUMPHREYS
It will be an easier boat to sail, with fewer sails to handle and better living conditions for the
crew. The race rules will favour imagination, creativity and sailing skills, and not an environment
where the biggest purse necessarily gives a bigger edge.
Each boat will have certain common features: canting keel and bulb, standardised carbon fibre
mast and a reduction in the number of sails from 38 to 23 for the race overall, with
approximately 10 sails measured in per leg. We hope this will help to constrain costs to
eliminate those areas where traditionally huge expenditures have made fractionally
competitive differences.
Recognising the importance of sophisticated media coverage, the new race boats will be
required to have a dedicated on-board media centre separate from the navigational
equipment. The latest mini-cams will be installed on each boat to provide even more
spectacular coverage of this great and challenging event.
Crew numbers will be reduced and women will be encouraged by new crew limits. An all-male
crew will be limited to nine; for a mixed crew of a least five women the number will be
increased to 10 and an all-female team may have up to 11 crewmembers.
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 21

2005-06
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Two-boat-testing has always been considered a great advantage. It is also an expensive one.
Teams with less time and money will not have this option, so by ensuring that a syndicate can
only build one new boat, we will remove this advantage. Time on the water is also of great
assistance in testing equipment and training crewmembers. With a new design it will be even
more important and advantages will be gained by being out on the water early. To try and
reduce the ‘arms race’ to be the first team on the water we will not be publishing the V.O.70
rule until September 2003. This does not restrict when the boat can be built but means that
everyone can begin work on research and development at a similar time and have
approximately the same, relatively limited, time on the water in the run up to the start.
Competing teams may join up for training purposes, improving information sharing and the
camaraderie of the race without inflating costs.
TIME PLAN
Traditionally the Notice of Race, which details the boat and the route for the next event, has
been issued at the London International Boat Show in the January following the finish of the
previous event. With so many changes to consider, we felt that we would be rushing and may
not have had time to undertake the necessary consultation and consideration to make the right
decisions. The Notice of Race will be published along with the V.O.70 rule and the Participation
Agreement in September 2003. Additions to these documents will be made at regular
periods.
22 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
THE COURSE
The race track will continue to follow the traditional route of the old clipper ships, sailing
around the world with the prevailing winds, however it will be take place over a shorter time
span, with only seven legs and therefore less stopovers.
An exciting new feature introduced for this event is a number of scoring gates and pit stops
around the world, where the fleet will be able to score points, which will count towards the final
score.
Traditionally the race has always begun in the UK, and the first change comes with the inclusion
of a Mediterranean port city as the start port, details of which will be published nearer to the
start of the event.
The first leg will take the fleet south, via a scoring gate at Fernando da Noronha, on the
Brazilian coast, to Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town has been a natural part of previous
races given its geographical location where two of the world’s great oceans meet, and thereby
a logical destination for leg one.
Leg two will be the first test of the Southern Ocean. Historically, the event has always been
known and respected for its long ocean legs, taking the event far south into the Southern
Ocean. It is racing across this lonely ocean that allows the sailors to use their experience and

push their boats to the limit and it is generally considered to provide the most exciting ocean
racing in the world. To make it even more exciting, we have introduced a scoring gate at the
Kerguelen Islands and another at Eclipse Island, off Albany on the west coast of Australia. The
leg finish will be in an Australasian port, which is still under negotiation. All the previous races
have visited Australia or New Zealand, and in the case of the Volvo Ocean Race 2001-02, both
were included. At least one of these countries will be a stopover in the next race, with the other
providing a pit stop.
Leg three will take the fleet back into the Southern Ocean and around the infamous Cape
Horn, which will also be a scoring gate, before the hot slog up to the leg finish in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil. South America has been a part of the race since its conception in 1973, and we
are pleased to continue the tradition of stopping in this important world market place.
Leg four will go direct to Baltimore, missing out a stopover in Florida, but with the inclusion of
a scoring gate at Fernando da Noronha. The race will restart from Annapolis as in previous
years.
A pit stop in New York is another new feature which will set the fleet up for a crack at the Blue
Riband transatlantic record from the Ambrose Light to the Lizard off the south western coast
of England (which will also be a scoring gate), before finishing the leg in Southampton, the
home of the race for many years.
The contest itself is made far more interesting by requiring the yachts to pass through
designated gates. Even more appealling will be the inshore racing. GRANT DALTON
Leg six will be a very tactical short leg, through the English Channel and the North Sea to
Göteborg, the home of Volvo and the scene of huge support during the last event.
And finally the fleet will sail the seventh leg as short sprint to a Baltic port for a spectacular and
close finish. Still under negotiation, the finish port will be announced closer to the start of the
event.
PIT STOPS
Following the huge success of the very first ocean racing pit stop, in Hobart, Tasmania, during
the previous event, we have decided to include two pit stops for this edition of the race. The
first will be either Australia or New Zealand and the second will be in New York. Pit stops not
only provide a marvellous media opportunity, but also a grandstand for the public, enabling
them to get up close and personal with the crews when they are in full-on racing mode and
find out what really goes on when the pressure is high. Teams will also collect half points for
their finishing positions at pit stops.
HISTORY IN PROGRESS 23

2005-06
IN PORT RACING
Another new feature for the next Volvo Ocean Race will be the inclusion of six in-port races,
with points counting towards the overall result. These inshore races will provide an exciting
atmosphere for the public, who will have the opportunity to see, first hand, these spectacular
race boats in action with their world-class crews and
feel a real involvement with the event. Each stopover
port will host a race, excluding the start and finish
ports.
Crew limits for in-port racing will be extended to allow
for one extra crewmember, perhaps a member of the
shore crew, a ‘star’ sailor, a fleet racing specialist or a
local expert. In addition, three, non-participating,
DANIEL FORSTER
crewmembers will be invited to race on each boat,
comprising a syndicate nominee (who could be the owner), a member of the media and a
Volvo representative. Inshore racing will give the inshore sailors on the teams an opportunity
to prevail in their speciality, close to the shore where spectators can get caught up in the
drama. The media will be able to package great races and the syndicates and sponsors will be
able to programme their entertainment and hospitality activity around these showcase events.
24 HISTORY IN PROGRESS
SCORING
The event will continue to use a high scoring system, i.e. in a 12-boat competition 12 points
will be awarded to the winner of each leg, the overall winner being the team with the most
points at the end of the race. All legs will count with no discards allowed. On the long ocean
legs, the gates will offer half points. The same system of ‘half points’ will be used for the in port
racing, accounting for 20% of the total points on offer.
AND FINALLY….
The Volvo Ocean Race has evolved over 30 years. It is now vastly different from the event that
was conceived over a pint of beer in a pub between Col. Bill Whitbread of the brewing family,
and Admiral Otto Steiner, of the Royal Naval Sailing Association. But some things never alter,
and although it is a highly professional event, it will always remain an adventure. The challenge
of the oceans never changes and it is still just as demanding to race through desolate Southern
Ocean as it was back in 1973. The respect that is felt as Cape Horn slips silently away to port
is never dimmed. This race is still the ultimate in human endeavour, and it will always
demand faith, trust and respect
among teammates. It is life at
the extreme and will always
remain so.
RICK TOMLINSON