Jan Torstenson

The Match Cup Sweden organizer Brandspot has initiated the new event "Meetingspot 2008", but Managing director Jan Torstenson started with thanking Lars-Erik Molse of Trendmark:

"We are proud to continue what he started, a classic sail forum event called Tune Up. This event unites the sail racing community and is a great start of the season."

There were five main topics in Meetingspot 2008; Volvo Ocean Race,  Match Cup Sweden, Lysekil Women’s Cup, America’s Cup, and the Olympics. Here is a summary of the most interesting news from the event.

Richard Brisius, Michael Woods, Martin Sohtell

Volvo Ocean Race

Stefan Rahm, Göran Petersson, Martin Sohtell

 
News for this season is the sailing route that now includes two stops in Asia, but not in Australia and New Zealand. It is also mandatory to have one person on each boat totally dedicated to communication and media, who will contribute live footage from all the teams. From a Swedish point of view good news is that the second last stop of the race will be in Stockholm, and possibly also one additional pit stop in Gothenburg.

Match Cup Sweden

The Swedish stage of the World Match Racing Tour enters its second year as a joint venture between GKSS and Brandspot, where Brandspot is responsible for the commercial part of the event. A majority of the world's best match race skippers have declared interest in attending. So far, most of the partners have been interested in B2B-marketing and Match Cup Sweden in Marstrand has been an appreciated venue for companies to meet and network. Since the event attracts more than 100.000 visitors each summer, the plan for 2008 is to add partners focusing on consumer marketing to the B2B-network.

Jan Torstenson, MD at Brandspot, was also pleased to announce a long-term, five year agreement with Childhood as Official Charity of Match Cup Sweden.

Lysekil Women’s Cup
The largest Match Racing event for women, Lysekil Women’s Cup was recently granted world championship status for 2009. Project Manager Anna Holmdahl explained the plans for an international match racing tour for women.

Anna also gave her regards to the municipality of Lysekil for their proactive and positive manners.

America’s Cup

Björn Hansen, Magnus Holmberg

Magnus Holmberg explains more about the difficulties:

“From a commercial point of view this insecurity around the next cup is devastating. All that we can do now is to rest and survive until we get some certain facts. We need to be 100% sure on the choice of boat before we can approach sponsors and partners.”

The Olympics

Daniel Brigmark came flying directly from races and training in Australia to tell about his challenge to get a ticket to the Olympics. A large number of dinghy sailors are fighting to reach Qingdao in August, one of the great highlights of sail racing 2008.

Round up

Stefan Rahm, Federation director for the Swedish Sailing Federation, explained the unique situation in Swedish sailing:

“At the moment we experience an incredible peak in our sport with many world class sailors and Swedish participation in the most important sailing events of the world. We will probably not experience anything quite like this in the foreseeable future.”  

Meetingspot 2008, which is the first of a series Meetingspot events, was concluded by Jan Torstenson and the moderators Ingemar Allén and Martin Sothell. They highlighted the high level of performance within Swedish sailing, both from a commercial and sporting perspective, and also wished everyone welcome back to Meetingspot 2009 next year.  

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