Dongfeng Race Team skipper Charles Caudrelier has picked six of the 12 Academy Squad sailors to sail the training leg from Sanya to Auckland in a re-enactment of Leg 4 of the Volvo Ocean Race. The six sailors are: Jin Hao Chen (Horace), Liu Ming (Leo), Ying Kit Cheng (Kit), Liu Xue, Jiru Yang (Wolf) and Yiran Zhang.
Credit: Victor Fraile/PSI/Volvo Ocean Race
For the majority of these Chinese sailors it will be their first long offshore sailing experience. “The training process has been gruelling and we have all been in constant competition with each other, it’s such a fantastic feeling to be part of the group chosen by Charles for this particular journey because I know this will be great experience for us and will bring us another step closer to making it into the final race crew,” says Liu Xue. The remaining six sailors will represent Dongfeng Race Team on the 21st March in the Round Hainan Regatta, competing with the two Jeanneau Sun Fast 3200’s in China’s premier offshore sailing race. They will continue to train as part of the Dongfeng Race Team Academy Squad and are scheduled to re-join the team for training later in the programme.
Parallel to the Round Hainan Regatta, the Dongfeng Race Team are scheduled to depart from their Official Training Base Serenity Marina in Sanya on Thursday 20th March. “It has been a really important time for us here in Sanya, it has allowed the team to train in great conditions and really get to know our boat. Looking ahead, the next important step is to choose the crew and I think this journey will play a key part in that. It will allow us to really test their offshore stamina as it will be a long and tough leg,” explained Charles Caudrelier.
This first training leg for Dongfeng Race Team has always been a key part of the training strategy as Team Director, Bruno Dubois explained: “Our planning has been driven by our desire to allow the Dongfeng Race Team to experience as many miles of the Volvo Ocean Race course as possible. This will be the first training leg for the team where we can put the Chinese Academy Squad sailors under the spotlight, as close to a race environment as we can make it.” Following on from Auckland, subject to timings, the team may then sail Dongfeng to Itajai, Brazil and on to Newport, USA or elect to ship the boat direct to Newport before sailing across the Atlantic to Europe in full race mode.
There is a strong commitment to a long-term sporting mission that puts the future interests of Chinese sailing at the core of Dongfeng Race Team project. For the 2014-15 edition the objective is to deliver a competitive campaign with, for the first time in the history of the race, multiple Chinese sailors onboard. This is a key element in setting the conditions for future Volvo Ocean Race campaigns where the aim will be to eventually have a 100% Chinese project with a Chinese skipper and a Chinese crew. There is a strong momentum to create a legacy for offshore sailing so that Chinese sailors can excel in this discipline, in the same way the Chinese Olympic sailors have done, and to that extent the partnership with the China Yachting Association is a key one for the project.
From Team Dongfeng
