VOR 2017, A VERY INTERESTING 2nd RATE RACE

Ok, the title is provocative and expresses my disillusion with what has become this race; 2nd rate why? A first rate race is raced with state of the art machines and with the best racers in the world. We can take a parallel with the F1 when last year cars are outdated and not competitive and where all pilots, even the slowest are the best in car racing and are really the cream among top pilots.

The VOR is raced on monotypes that are far from being state of the art, designed by the loser (among NA) of the last edition raced with prototypes and the boats are slower than the fastest VOR of that edition, 7 years ago!!!

Among the sailors that race the VOR there are some top racers but the majority are far from being the best world’s offshore sailors and we reached a point where the rules are bended allowing an advantage in having women instead of men. Top racing is done with the best of the best, being them men or women, not giving some advantage in having women among the crew.

The race started and started well with many showing a big surprise (even among the TV commentators) for the Chinese boat being ahead. Don’t understand why, they have by far the best crew and even if not all top sailors they have 4 of them, including the skipper more three good ones (including a woman) and only two less competitive sailors. Sure, Mapfre won the in port race but the Chinese team was close behind, after some mistakes and a good recovery.

If the best team has only 4 top offshore sailors and the others have less how can we call this a 1st rate race? Compare with the Vendee globe where almost all top solo offshore sailors are there and the boats are state of the art to the point of making impossible a last edition boat to win the race. Put the Groupama, the VOR that won two editions ago, competing on this VOR edition and he would win the race!!! So much for the state of the art sailboats!

Another ridiculous thing about this race is the boat nationalities, for instance they say: “Team AkzoNobel is a brand-new Dutch ocean racing team....continuing the remarkable legacy of Dutch teams competing in the race.” and they only have a Dutch among the crew !!!! A long way from the whitebread spirit where nations felt that they had boats representing them.

There is even a boat from the United Nations! Or an American/Danish boat without any Dane on it! If we consider (as it would be normal) that a boat to represent a country has to have at least the skipper plus more than half the crew from that country only Mapfre qualifies itself as representing a nation: Spain.

About this race: great start with the “Chinese” team showing already supremacy and with Mapfre showing that it can put a good fight and win some in port races or even legs. Or maybe I am wrong and the Spanish can fight in equal terms. You can follow this race, now on its first leg between Alicante and Lisboa here:

http://www.volvooceanrace.com/static/tracker/leg1/en_babylon.html

Don't miss this video (click on the link):
https://www.facebook.com/volvooceanrace/videos/10156055552097437/