Volvo Ocean Race sailors compete with a soldier mentality

Lack of sleep coupled with tight races over a long period of time makes for a triple-decker stress sandwich and every Volvo Ocean Race sailor has to take a bite, writes Osman Samiuddin from Cape Town.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s Azzam skipper Ian Walker fought rough sea conditions and cold weather to steer his boat to victory during the first leg. Matt Knighton / Volvo Ocean Race

There is an empirical truth about the toll round-the-world-race sailing takes on its sailors.

Back when the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) was known as the Whitbread Race, a team of doctors examined one of the teams on completion of the challenge.

Neal McDonald, a veteran sailor and performance director with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s Azzam, was part of the team under examination. The doctors found that the only comparable reference point to what McDonald and his crew had experienced was that of an active duty soldier during a war.

If you hang around sailors long enough, chances are you will see examples of what the doctors found.

If you saw some of the first leg’s video updates from Azzam, especially near the end of the leg, and witnessed skipper Ian Walker’s increasingly frazzled bearing, it would be fair to say that, to the uninitiated, there are grounds for their ­findings.

One close observer said Walker, who was fuelled part of the way by caffeine-infused chewing gum, was spent.

This year’s VOR is likely to see more manifestations of the soldier-in-war scenario.

One-design boats mean no crew has a definitive speed advantage, which will make for more of the kind of racing seen on the first leg: long periods of the fleet stuck close together, eyeball to eyeball sailing, and very close finishes.

It would be like sprinting a marathon; not necessarily in terms of sustaining the speed as much as remaining within a bunch of competitors at all times – out of the corner of your eye someone is always there over nearly a month of racing.

“It’s tough, mentally it’s really tough,” said Knut Frostad, the race chief executive and a former sailor.

“You get stressed. They are winning Leg 1 after 26 days and they have a boat 12 minutes behind them, which means you cannot relax for a second.

“You cannot afford to make a single mistake there. I could see it on Ian when he arrived, he looked tired and you realise, wow, it’s going to be a tough nine months. But this is sport and it’s more fun to watch when everyone has a shot at it and there is an edge.”

Walker fairly lives for that edge; former sailing partners – and Walker himself – have said he is better at handling the stresses than before.

So he shrugged off the burden the finish placed on the crew, where no one got much sleep at all over the last few days.

But that was only the first leg and, as skipper, Walker’s responsibilities far outweigh those of the others.

“It’s very difficult to completely detach from that and relax,” Frostad said.

He said when he sailed in the race he had to actively work on sleeping techniques so that he could turn his body off.

Sometimes it worked, many times it just did not and in rough, windy conditions, it often became ­impossible.

There is recognition this year of the increased stresses of one-design sailing, and the race may be entering new territory in terms of monitoring the effect of that on its sailors.

Most teams have a variety of support staff, including coaches for preparing for the mental strains of a leg.

But one boat, Team Alvimedica, has taken a significant step in providing greater insight into the rigours of the race by commissioning a medical study on the impact on its crew.

Researchers from three major European universities will examine the crew at the end of each leg.

They will pay greatest attention to the effects of stress on the heart and how the crew’s diet is manifested in their ­bodies.

“They are in extreme stress conditions,” said Alvimedica chief executive Cem Bozkurt.

“They can’t eat properly, they can’t drink properly, they can’t rest properly. That cracks everyone.

“The stress they are facing is not much different from guys who are in the boardrooms of large companies, or like soldiers in war zones and astronauts. The data has never been shared in the medical ­community.”

The results will start coming through after the third and fourth legs, which are considered the most gruelling.

The team plan to publish a paper at the end of their nine-month research Bozkurt said it is possible, if there are findings common to all sailing, that they will be shared publicly.

Follow our sports coverage on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE