As part of our enhanced follow-up coverage of the Virtual Travel Retail Expo, we revisit the inspiring story – told in the Knowledge Hub – of Team Fortitude IV, which overcame huge adversity to win one of the world’s most arduous rowing races, the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. (Full story in the video on this page.)
Ollie Palmer, who is Diageo Global Travel Head of Customer Marketing, and Tom Foley, JLL Executive – Capital Markets, discussed how they and their two fellow crew worked as a team and used the power of a positive mindset on the 3,000-mile, 30-day rowing race from the Canary Islands to Antigua. None had ever rowed in a race before taking on the epic Atlantic challenge.
The four-man team opened a lead early in the race when there was a headwind after a few days at sea. The temptation, they said, was to drop anchor as progress would be slow and hard going into the wind, but their aim was to push through and row as hard as they could for 48 hours.
Palmer said: “We just focused purely on our objective and, coming out of that 48 hours, we found ourselves 26 miles ahead of second place. That small buffer allowed us to start enjoying the race.”
The team held that lead until the final week of the race, they told viewers, but that was when they found themselves rowing into a tropical storm with 12-metre waves. In this storm, the boat capsized with Foley thrown overboard, a moment Palmer described as “terrifying”.
Yet they righted the boat, dried out their equipment, worked their way through the storm and were ultimately the first team to arrive in the Caribbean. “I can’t describe the emotions when we arrived in Antigua,” Palmer added.
Foley said: “A lot of people have their own Atlantic Ocean – whether that is writing a book, running a marathon or starting a business – and the one thing that holds them back is their own self-belief. If you have self-belief and are positive about something, what you can achieve is far beyond what you ever thought would be possible.”
We are pleased to make the story of their Atlantic challenge widely available through the video on this page.
