Magnus Olosson - 61

A penny for Magnus Olsson’s thoughts right now. During the course of this race he will enter his 61st year and with the greying hair comes a wealth of perspective. For while his crewmates will currently be cursing the paltry single-figure boat speeds managed as Ericsson 3 grapple with the Doldrums, he knows exactly how far monohulls have come in the pace stakes. Just 14 years have passed since he sailed the 1993-94 race onboard Intrum Justitia, the 64-foot Whitbread 60 skippered by Lawrie Smith. During the second leg they sailed 425 nautical miles in 24 hours to set a new world record, before extending it to 428 nautical miles on the leg four trip from Auckland to Punta del Este.

Dennis Conner’s Toshiba then raised the bar to 434.4 nautical miles in the 1997-98 race before Smith reclaimed the mark with a 449.1 nautical mile run during leg two. Another five years passed before that mark was beaten, but when it happened it came in style. John Kostecki’s illbruck, which ultimately won the race, managed 484 nautical miles at an average speed of 20.16 knots. Mari Cha IV, a 140-foot monster, duly beat the record the next year with a distance of 525 nautical miles, but a new breed of monohull was about to be born. Bouwe Bekking’s movistar hinted at the Volvo Open 70s potential when she sailed 530 nautical miles ahead of the last race – an average speed of 22.09 knots – but the Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed ABN AMRO ONE then added 16.14 nautical miles to that tally during the first leg. Their sister ship, ABN AMRO TWO, subsequently confounded the sailing world in 2006 with a distance of 562.96 nautical miles which many thought would hold a long reign.Then, once again with a boat designed by Kouyoumdjian, came a stunning distance.

Between 18:55 on October 28 and 18:55 on October 29, Ericsson 4 sailed 596.6 nautical miles during the first leg marathon to Cape Town.The scheds looked ominous from the start. Just four hours in the team had clocked up 98.5 nautical miles and by the 12-hour mark 304.2 nautical miles had passed under their hull. When the run ended, eclipsing the ABN AMRO TWO mark by 34 nautical miles, it was discovered that they had averaged a speed of 24.85 knots. Now it seems the 600-nautical mile barrier is still a milestone waiting to be reached. It briefly seemed that Ericsson 4 had managed just that when their run was recorded at 602 miles only to be ratified at 596.6 by the World Sailing Speed Record Council.  “This record, these speeds, have come a long way in a short time,” Olsson said. In context, it is an improvement of 168.6 nautical miles in 14 years and an average speed increase of seven knots. “Who knows where it will end,” Olsson added.