 |
SINGAPORE. Puma has embarked on the fourth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009, leaving Singapore on a high note on 18 January bound for Qingdao, China.
Expected to be the toughest ever leg sailed in the history of the Volvo Ocean Race, this leg will take the Puma Ocean Racing team 2,500 nautical miles northeast towards Qingdao into freezing weather conditions. The predominantly upwind leg will take around ten days to complete. The following leg will be the longest leg ever in the history of the race: an epic 12,300 nautical miles from Qingdao across the Southern Ocean to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Such brutal sailing conditions are a hallmark of the gruelling nine-month yacht race, which covers 37,000 nautical miles across four continents.
As reported, the Volvo Ocean Race is said to be one of the most challenging and extreme events in the sailing world. Often referred to as the “˜Everest of Sailing’, the race began in Alicante, Spain in October 2008 and will involve stopovers in ten countries before concluding in St Petersburg, Russia in June this year.
 |  |  |
 |  |
 | |
The Volvo Ocean Race Village at ONE°15 Marina Club on the sunny island of Sentosa, Singapore attracted an estimated 40,000 visitors throughout the entire stopover period (Photos: Melody Ng/The Moodie Report) | |
Singapore represents the second Asian stopover following Cochin, India, where Puma arrived in fifth place on 1 December 2008. Puma’s second placing in the Singapore In Port Race brings the team a little further up the overall leaderboard into third place, just two points behind Telefonica Blue.
Puma Ocean Racing is skippered by Ken Read, considered one of the world’s most accomplished sailors. Read, who turns 48 this year, has twice been at the helm of Dennis Conner’s America’s Cup programmes in 2000 and 2003. He was named “˜US Rolex Yachtsman of the Year’ twice and has over 40 World, North American and National Championships to his name.
Read got his first taste of the epic race two years ago, when he sailed the last four legs of the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-2006 with the Ericsson Racing Team. “It was an eye-opener,” Read muses to The Moodie Report. “It was completely different from anything I’ve ever done before. We all want to test ourselves as human beings at one time or another in our lives and I just had never felt tested like that before. And the learning curve was immense. Here I was in my mid-forties learning more in a couple of weeks about the sport of sailing than I had in the last 20 years.”
Since then, the hook was set. “I found myself consumed by what I had just done. I just couldn’t talk about it enough,” Read recalls. Soon he found himself talking to a friend of Puma Chairman and CEO Jochen Zeitz. “The more I described my experience in the Volvo, the more he said, “˜If Puma were to ever get into this sport, this is the way to go – this is rock “˜n’ roll’. This is the Puma way: fun and exciting and fast and crazy and furious.”
 |  |
 |  |
Singapore has been a memorable three-week stopover for the Puma Ocean Racing team, who spent Christmas in the city during the Volvo Ocean Race’s first ever visit to Asia (Photos: Sally Collison/Puma Ocean Racing) | |
‘Absolutely a dream partnership’
The mutual friend arranged for a meeting between Read and Zeitz and a partnership quickly fell into place. Puma had already been toying with a list of sports to next develop its successful “˜sport lifestyle’ concept, including sailing, while Read was ready to take on new challenges and run his own sailing team. “It was fate, it really was,” Read smiles.
“I wasn’t even looking for a sponsor or a Volvo programme and they [Puma] weren’t even really looking for a sailboat racing team either. It almost kind of worked because we weren’t desperately seeking each other. It worked because I liked Jochen and he liked me – we trusted each other. He introduced me right away with [Puma Chief Marketing Officer] Antonio Bertone. Antonio and I became great friends and before you know it, we’re buying boats and putting designs together and hiring a team and flat out trying to win the Volvo race – it was wild.”
Highlighting the dynamics of the partnership, Read says: “I don’t call them “˜sponsors’ – we’re friends. This is the first kind of team-sponsor relationship where we’re just all friends, we’re in this together. We completely understand what Puma is trying to get out of this and Puma completely understands what the sailors are trying to get out of this, and we work really hard to mesh everything together as seamlessly as possible.
“There are many times where what the sponsor and what the professional athlete is trying to accomplish are completely butting heads. But in this situation why we all get along so well is because I know I will bend over backwards to make sure Puma gets more than they ever imagined out of this campaign, and they will bend over backwards to make sure that the sailors aren’t hindered by them getting in the way of our ultimate goal, which is to win the race. For me, it’s absolutely a dream partnership,” he enthuses.
 |  |
Puma’s bold red and black colour theme forms a striking presence, whether at the dock or onshore (Photos: Melody Ng) | |
What the sailing world needs
Read is excited to see a huge consumer brand take on the sport of sailing, upping the sport’s visibility to both sailors and non-sailors alike. “If I can retire someday and my legacy is bringing a company like Puma into the sport of sailing – knowing what that’s going to do for the sport of sailing in the long term – then I can die a happy man.
“Because their [Puma’s] clientele, their way of life, how they spread their word and where the word goes to”¦ Now non-sailors all around the world know about the sport of sailing for the first time in their lives. So a consumer-based company like Puma is so important for the sport of sailing that we have to work hard to get more and more involved, because that’s how our sport is going to grow,” he adds.
As the only sport lifestyle company to participate in this year’s race, Puma seems set to reap the benefits of the extensive coverage given to the Volvo Ocean Race. Not only has it rolled out a Puma Sailing Collection, including a performance line and sailing-inspired lifestyle products, it is also the official provider of Volvo Ocean Race apparel.
The Puma Sailing Performance Collection
To help develop the Puma Sailing Performance Collection, Read took two duffel bags filled with his best sailing gear to Germany, where he met with Puma’s product development team. There they discussed what he liked and what he didn’t like, and efforts were made to incorporate the team’s preferences into the final versions. “We worked on every aspect of every single thing that we wear. We had input in every single thing. We went through four versions, and the fourth version is what we’re wearing now,” Read says.
“To say that we were all stunned at the end of the day at how good it was is a huge understatement because, quite frankly, halfway through we didn’t think they were going to pull it off. It was a huge undertaking.
“Remember, there are times when you’re out in the middle of the ocean and your survival depends on the gear you’re wearing – not just your comfort, but your survival. And these guys got it; they figured it out, they spent the money, they spent the time, and the stuff is unbelievably good, for literally being just over a year old,” Read tells The Moodie Report.
The performance collection will be worn by the Puma Ocean Racing team throughout the entire race. Designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the race, from the icy temperatures of the Southern Ocean to the tropical climates of India and Brazil, the line is available globally at marine specialty and select Puma stores.
il mostro
Puma’s red and black sailboat stands out with incredible presence at the ONE°15 Marina Club, Sentosa, the location of the Volvo Ocean Race village in Singapore. It is little wonder why it’s been christened il mostro – “˜the monster’ in Italian.
A second-generation Volvo Open 70 designed by Botin Carkeek, its graphic design was conceived by Puma, based on the look of one of Puma’s most iconic and popular shoes called the “˜Mostro’. The asymmetric graphics on the boat include the red Puma formstrip on the starboard side and a texturised red shoe strap on the port side. The sole of the shoe wraps around the bottom of the boat to give it a full 3-D visual impact when the boat is heeling. Sails are red with a giant black Leaping Cat logo and each sail will be named after a famous mythic monster.
 |  |  |
| Ken Read (centre) on the il mostro: “Is Puma good for the sport of sailing? Well, that boat is exactly why Puma is good for the sport of sailing: The sport has never seen a boat like that before” (Photos: Sally Collison/Puma Ocean Racing) | ||
When quizzed on the design of the boat, Read replies: “This leads back to the question you asked earlier: is Puma good for the sport of sailing? Well, that boat and the graphic design of the boat is exactly why Puma is good for the sport of sailing. The sport has never seen a boat like that before.
“That is their brand. At the end of the day, that’s their advertisement. You see that thing flying off the wave, whether you know how to sail or not, you cannot help but look there and go, “˜holy shit, would you look at that?’ And that’s exactly what they wanted to achieve. That’s why it’s called il mostro, “˜the monster’. It’s a crazy monster of a boat that is hopefully a magnet that attracts people into our sport and a magnet attracting people into the Puma stores.”
The months ahead
Read describes his second time in the Volvo Ocean Race as “very very very very different” from his first experience two years ago, where he was playing a mere supporting role as a crew member. “Here I have to be CEO, I have to be the boss, I have to be the father figure, I’ve got to be a shrink – and everything in between. I have to be a sailor too. I’ve got to hire and fire; it’s truly a management role.
“And because of that, it’s been hard at times because I haven’t been able to get on the passionate sailing side of it as much as I’d like to, especially during the boat design phase. I had to hire a couple of guys to really take that over because we just didn’t have the time. If I did all that then I wouldn’t be doing other things. I’ve got to look out for Puma. A huge part of my life is to make sure Puma’s getting what they need to get out of this. Like I said before, I take that very seriously,” Read stresses.
The Singapore stopover has been a memorable one for the team, who spent Christmas in the city with their families. After enjoying some valuable downtime with his wife, Kathy, and daughter, Victoria, Read is all set to take on the rough seas with his other family – his Puma Ocean Racing teammates.
 |
The Puma team bids farewell to family and friends on the dock on Sentosa Island as they brace themselves for one of the toughest legs in the Volvo Ocean Race, bound for Qingdao, China (Photo credit: Sally Collison/Puma Ocean Racing) |
“We’re very much a family. We love each other, we hate each other, we fight, we cry, we yell, we are a family. We’re living in this incredibly confined space – hot, cold, bad weather, sweating, no wind, too much wind, soaking wet and everything in between, no sleep – as you can imagine, it gets pretty pesky at times. But there are times when you just look at each other and think: there’s no other group of human beings that I would rather be with on the face of this planet,” he stresses.
So how confident is Puma Ocean Racing of winning the race? “None of us would be doing this if we didn’t think we could win. Now, are we capable of winning? That’s a whole other subject. Would I put us as the race favourites? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t bet on us probably. But as a bunch of individuals meshed into a team, I wouldn’t bet against us either. Every person on this boat thinks we have a chance of winning, or they wouldn’t have signed up in the first place,” Read says with resolution.
Even if the team doesn’t win, the crew can still count on the completion of the race as an epic life experience like no other, says Read. “Sometimes you’re lying there in your bunk going, “˜this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life’. But all of a sudden you’re coming into the dock, and you see your family and friends and you’re holding the trophy – and it’s amazing how human beings have such short memories. You forget how miserable you were not too long ago, and with the whole world right there in your hand, you just get to thinking “˜it just doesn’t get any better than this’.
“It’s a life experience. I never could’ve imagined a life experience like this, ever. I had huge expectations for it and it turned out way better than I ever imagined,” Read says.
For more information about the race, team and the Puma Sailing collections, visit www.pumaoceanracing.com.
ABOUT PUMA
Established in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1948, Puma is a global sport lifestyle company that aims to fuse influences from sport, lifestyle and fashion. It distributes products including footwear, apparel and accessories in over 80 countries. Visit www.puma.com.
[comments]
MORE STORIES ON PUMA
Puma sails ahead in Volvo Ocean Race – 12/12/08
Puma runs away with Olympic Games success – 08/12/08
