Grant Dalton, skipper of Amer Sports One after coming third overall in the Volvo Ocean Race.

by Volvo Ocean race media on 10 Jun 2002 Q: How does it feel, another podium finish overall. You must be pleased.

A: Yes. That was a bit of a stressful leg. Third’s not first. We’ve
reflected on it over the last few miles when we realised we were going to
be in third place. This time a year ago, we didn’t even have a boat.
With all the trials and tribulations, I think it is just fine.

Q: Both your boats in together, and not necessarily in the order you would
want!

A: Well, I think it was quite decent of us to let the girls ahead of us.
It sort of adds to the story… I think it was a pretty good thing..
(laughs!) Seriously, they sailed a really leg. We had a plan before the
start this time and it was the right way to go, and now it’s all over.

Q: This campaign has been so much hard work, you must be delighted with
the result?

A: Yes, I am really. You remember in Southampton nine months ago, I said
I would be happy with third, when on paper we were probably only about
seventh. We’ve got a lot of very good campaigns now behind us, but two
excellent campaigns in front of us. I am happy, yes. To Assa Abloy and
particularly Illbruck was always a winner, they never looked in trouble
this leg at all and they’ve done a great job.

Q: How have the crew helped to make this such a successful campaign?

A: It’s not insignificant that this is one of the only campaigns with no
crew changes except one, which was through illness. The guys have stuck
together. We’ve had bad legs and have been beaten consistently by Tyco
and News Corp and we’ve just had to stick together. There’s always the
pressure to change things, people or the boat, but I’ve always felt it
wasn’t broken, so there was not way to try and fix it. There were event
calls for us to take less people on this leg and I didn’t really want to
do that and I am glad that they’ve all come through and this is as good as
we could have done.

Q: Are you glad that you took this boat rather than the other one?

A: Of course I go through that every time in my mind when we get a bad
result too and I think that, if you look at it now, what could have been,
illbruck was always going to win. At best we could have beaten Assa
Abloy, but I don’t think we ever would have, in the other boat. Probably
we’ve done about as good as we could ever had done and so on that basis, I
am happy with that selection of the boat.