Ian Walker heads Irish entry for Volvo race

• December
• 13

6:00 am Trucks

The Volvo Ocean Race will have strong Emerald Isle connections next year after The Green Team was announced yesterday as the seventh entry to the race. The Irish team will be skippered by Ian Walker, one of Britain’s leading sailors, who said that he would draw from the Irish talent available for the ten-man crew.

“We’re not naming all of our team [because] we’ve not secured all our funding and we’re also holding off until we know what’s going to happen with the America’s Cup, which will radically alter the number and calibre of people that are available,” he said.

The Green Team’s presence should make certain that the eighth leg, from Boston to Galway - the first Irish stopover in the history of the race - will have a uniquely Irish flavour. The 39,000-mile race starts next October from Alicante, Spain.

Walker, a two-times Olympic silver medal-winner and twice skipper of America’s Cup campaigns, has built his reputation as an inshore sailor. His most recent success has been as skipper of Patches, the TP52 boat, in which he worked alongside Eamon Conneely, the owner, to secure the Global Championship in 2006.