The new trophy in the long shot and enlargement
DHL has secured the exclusive rights to all international and domestic freight traffic for the event in a tender. This probably also includes the transport of the new trophy for the overall winner.
In addition to its involvement in Formula 1, Global Fashion Week and the Rugby World Cup, the company has now also recognized sailing as an advertising platform. “The Volvo Ocean Race is a truly global project of world class format. In doing so, we can prove that we are able worldwide to fulfill our performance promise under difficult conditions within extremely tight time frames and to cope with the complex logistics of large sports events”, says Thomas George, Freight Director of DHL.
According to DHL, the core services include the transport of cargo and sailing equipment by air, sea and land, especially from port to port. DHL is therefore responsible for the entire logistics management - from picking up a sailing team's cargo at the agreed location to delivering the containers on time to the next stopover. In addition to air, sea and road transport, DHL is to offer participants complete tracking of their freight during transport and take care of customs clearance and storage of transported goods.
The upcoming Volvo Ocean Race starts in the Spanish port city of Alicante in autumn 2011 and ends in Galway, Ireland in summer 2012. During the nine-month sailing race, the teams will cover over 39,000 nautical miles. The route runs via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sany (China) and Auckland, around Cape Horn and from there to Itajai (Brazil), Miami, Lisbon and Lorient (France). The first race of this kind took place in 1973/74; In 2011/12 it will be held for the eleventh time.
The new trophy for the overall winner also takes this into account. The tower-like cup made of aluminum and silver is composed of eleven interconnected rings, each ring representing an edition of the event. The year, the route, the victorious boat and its skipper are engraved in the respective ring, the eleventh is inscribed at the end of the upcoming race. This should always be followed by a ring for each further race, so the cup could theoretically grow infinitely high.