The Ericsson 4, a boat crewed by a Swedish team and skippered by two-time Brazilian Olympic champion Torben Grael, has won the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009, held between Stockholm and St. Petersburg over nine months during which the competitors overcame 68,650 kilometers. Institutional representatives of the Canary Islands celebrate this success as the Regional Government sponsored the team's training base in Lanzarote.
"It is a source of pride for all Canarians that the team that carried out its training in our archipelago has finally been the winner of the Volvo Ocean Race. We all feel it today as a shared success," said the Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, Rita Martín.
For their part, the members of the Ericsson Racing Team have pointed out that "the choice of the base was very successful because the Canary Islands offers one of the most suitable climates in the world: it has good winds and very few rainy days." "This means having good conditions for effective training, very few days are lost due to rain or lack of wind; losing working days could negatively affect technical improvements," added the athletes.
The crew members also highlighted the accessibility of the place, as they were only 10 minutes from the Lanzarote airport, as well as the amount of accessible resources during their stay in Puerto Calero and the benefits that this entails for the work that a professional team of this level needs to develop.
