Prologue finishes with Team Childhood 1 overall victory

Team Childhood 1, the Dutch-Swedish flagged entry in The Ocean Race Europe, is the overall winner of the Prologue, a shakedown event to the European race organised by four of the northern-Europe based teams.

Team Childhood 1 finished tied on points with Bouwe Bekking’s Sailing Poland but took the overall trophy from the Polish team by virtue of a better result in the last race. Ambersail 2 from Lithuania finished in third place, while The Austrian Ocean Race Project finished in fourth.

The four legs of the Prologue – from Klaipeda in Lithuania, to Gydnia, Poland to Stockholm, Sweden and then the final leg to the South Swedish Waypoint - were closely contested from the start.

Ambersail 2 crossed the finish line of the third leg of the Prologue in first place after the challenging 200+ mile race from the Swedish capital.

The leg, packed with major tactical decisions, ended up being a match race and with all four yachts fielding a mixture of experienced Ocean Race sailors and a new generation of young offshore sailors, it was a tremendous taste of what is to come in both The Ocean Race Europe later this month and The Ocean Race itself, which is due to start in October 2022.

Three-time Olympian Pieter-Jan Postma, one of the coaches on board Team Childhood 1 commented proudly after the finish: “We have taken a giant step as a team in recent weeks. We have asked a lot of ourselves and each other. We started this last stage somewhat tired and made a few small mistakes. Despite that, we continued to believe in each other and keep fighting. Although we finished second in this leg it was enough for the overall victory. This is a victory for a new generation of offshore sailor - it is a wonderful process with great people.”

Team Childhood co-skipper, the 26-year old Jelmer van Beek added: “I am looking forward to The Ocean Race Europe itself. With three more VO65s on the water, Viva Mexico, AkzoNobel and Mirpuri Racing Team – that promises to be very cool!”

For the Lithuanian team on AmberSail 2, the Prologue has been a race of firsts. “It was the first time that four VO65 yachts have been in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, it was the start of our sustainability initiative, we were the first team to receive the Relay4Nature baton, and we won the last leg! It was great preparation, training and testing for The Ocean Race Europe!” commented a delighted Rokas Milevičius, skipper of Ambersail 2

Konstantin Kobale of the Austrian Ocean Race Project confirmed the positive feedback on the Prologue: “It was the first real race for us as a team and we are really happy with the results that we achieved. We are a very young team, 24 years old on average, and we have learnt a lot as a group as well as a team. The learning curve has been very steep, but we can be very proud of what we have done here, and we will be a strong team at the start of the Europe tour.”

The four VO65 yachts are now making their way to Lorient, France where they will join the three other VO65s and five IMOCAs for The Ocean Race Europe. The Ocean Race Europe starts in the French Atlantic port and stops in Cascais, Portugal, and Alicante, Spain before finishing in the Italian city of Genoa, after a total of just under 2000 miles of racing.

The Europe race is a new event, designed to showcase the top-flight, fully-crewed, competitive ocean racing featuring the best international teams. Each offshore leg will be scored equally, and there will also be two coastal races in Cascais and Genoa which award bonus points to the top three finishers.

The inaugural edition of The Ocean Race Europe in 2021 leads off a ten-year calendar of racing activity that includes confirmed editions of the iconic, fully crewed, around the world event - The Ocean Race - every four years, beginning in 2022-23.