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SINGAPORE: Singapore will be the first Southeast Asian city to host a stopover for the prestigious Volvo Ocean Race.
It took two years of planning for the race to finally come here in January 2009.
More details were released at the signing ceremony at One Degree 15 Marina on Monday.
Lasting some ten months, the world's premier ocean racing event tests the endurance of both the crew and their 70-foot-long yachts.
Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran said: "These efforts will take us closer to our vision of 17 million visitor arrivals and S$30 billion in tourism receipts by the year 2015. This year, we are looking to cross a historical 10 million mark for visitor arrivals to Singapore."
The race is expected to cost some S$10 million to host.
Arthur Tay, Chairman of One 15 Singapore Ocean Race, said: "50 containers are required to construct the Race Village - this excludes the race sponsor whose pavilion will bring 10 to 30 containers each, and then there are the containers for the boats and crews, and the creation of haul-out and maintenance facility to accommodate the entire fleet."
Between 300,000 and 500,000 visitors are expected to visit the race village.
Jeremy Troughton, Planning and Operations Director of Volvo Event Management UK, said: "Figures from the last race have between 300,000 and 500,000 people visiting the race villages during the course of the event, so it is a direct co-relation to the marketing and promotion done ahead of the event."
President of Volvo East Asia, Eberhard Wedekind, said: "Singapore is very attractive because it will be winter in Europe at that time of the year and a lot of corporate customers, from Europe and North America, will be more than happy to come here."
And these visitors will have more than just on-shore activities to indulge in. Two in-port races are being planned for the Singapore stopover, with fans catching the action from boats.
Low Teo Ping, Vice President of the International Sailing Federation, said: "We will probably have the event outside the Marina Barrage where we have a huge expanse of water.
"We have already been working with the Maritime Port Authority and they have, in fact, agreed to help us clear enough of the maritime traffic to allow us to have a rather attractive event out there."
The six teams taking part in the 2008 race will have to deal with unpredictable weather and heavy shipping traffic, making it one of the toughest race adventures in the event's history since it started in 1973.
- CNA/so
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