Volvo Race plans for next edition
18 May 2015
Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, Team SCA and Team Brunel lead away from the Newport start – photo: Marc Bow/Volvo Ocean Race
VOLVO RACE: Knut Frostad, CEO of the Volvo Race, unveiled his ideas for the future of the race to stakeholders in a presentation in the USA on Saturday May 16.
According to a story in The Daily Sail, Mr Frostad has set a target of eight to ten boats for the next round the world race in 2017-18.
He also Frostad revealed the costs for a newly built Volvo Ocean 65 one-design had been pegged at the same basic price of €4.5million as it cost at its launch three years ago. “That’s a massive achievement,” he said.
All seven identical boats, which will finish the current race in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 27 June, will be returned for use in 2017-18, but more will be built on demand.
“We want new teams to join us, but our priority is to get as many existing teams as possible back on the start line,” said Mr Frostad.
The race will look into what can be done to improve the boats on a number of fronts including energy generation and consumption, and communications.
These improvements will be announced at METS in Amsterdam over 17-19 November this year. The fleet would then be refitted between November 2016 and May 2017.
Mr Frostad added that a new and better sail design would be ready for delivery by 1 March, 2017, ahead of the next race scheduled to start in October that year.
He also admitted that the race needed to make it easier for new sponsors to enter and that would be spearheaded by a major editing of its rules book for teams and ports.
This currently runs to 247 pages “and that’s too long”, said Frostad. The new, more concise version would be ready by September this year.
Improvements
Frostad said he also wanted to see onboard communications improvements to keep pace with the ever changing media landscape. One would be the introduction of GPS directed camera drones, which could offer fans far more aerial coverage of the boats at sea than is currently available.
“Each boat will carry one of these drones. I’m 100% sure that will happen,” he said. He also announced plans for longer and better training for Onboard Reporters, starting in the summer of 2016.
The route for the next edition would be revealed in January 2016. Several ports, including the start in Alicante, had already been settled for 2017-18 and Newport, Rhode Island, has been given a two-month exclusive period to negotiate a new deal for the next race.
Mr Frostad also said the event had proved a much more effective vehicle for business-to-business activity than ever before.
Before the Newport stopover, more than 19,000 business guests had attended and, in the short, two day pit stop next month in The Hague, 11,000 corporate places had been sold by the Dutch city alone.
Frostad added that Gothenburg would “at least, match that number”.
And that means the previous record of 25,000 corporate guests achieved in the 2011-12 edition would be at least doubled by the end of the race on June 27.