Volvo Ocean Race: China wants to know again

After Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and the women's team SCA Ocean Racing, a third team has entered the Volvo Ocean Race for the 12th edition of the 2014/2015 classic: Team Dongfeng is supported by the automotive company Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle and the international marketing agency OC Sports. This is the third entry in the round-the-world ocean marathon for the up-and-coming country after the participation of Green Dragon (2008/2009) and Team Sanya (2011/2012).

The team manager of the yet-to-be-recruited team is Bruno Dubois. The experienced ocean sailor and North Sails man in France is facing a mammoth task, as the team needs to integrate as many Chinese sailors as possible. "Our focus is on recruiting and training Chinese sailors. This is clearly our biggest challenge," explains Dubois. "We need to catch up with the average experience of a Volvo Ocean Race crew in just ten months. In parallel to this process, we want to leave a legacy that will allow the Chinese to embrace sailing in the future. And we want to develop the talent pool so that future Chinese campaigns can be 100 per cent Chinese."

Only two Chinese sailors have taken part in the Volvo Ocean Race in the past: On "Green Dragon" it was media crew member Guo Chuan in 2008/2009. Team Sanya was strengthened by "Tiger" Teng Jiange in 2011/2012. Chinese sailing then experienced a further boost thanks to the success of Xu Lijia, who won her country's first sailing gold in the Laser Radial at the 2012 Olympic Games.

The twelfth edition of the Volvo Ocean Race will once again take its participants to the harbour of Sanya on Hainan Island. The race around the globe starts in Alicante and takes the teams via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, Itajai (Brazil), Newport (USA), Lisbon and Lorient in Brittany to the finish harbour of Gothenburg. Ten harbours and around 40,000 nautical miles lie ahead of the sailors. But the organisers still have a completely different challenge to overcome before the start: So far, the response to the new standardised Volvo Ocean 65 class has been meagre. VOR manager Knut Frostad and his team still have just under a year to turn the currently only three registered teams into a respectable fleet. The starting signal will be given on 4 October 2014 and the yachts are due to reach their Swedish destination port at the end of June 2014, where they will take part in a final harbour race on 27 June.