The Volvo Ocean Race media team has linked up with an inner city school in Southampton to give pupils an insight into what is involved running an international performance sailing event.

The project started when keen racing staff at Chamberlayne Park School in Weston contacted the Volvo Ocean Race UK Press Officer Andreas Hanakamp. It was soon discovered that a huge range of topics surrounding the race would augment the students' studies, including the curriculum areas of geography, nature, culture, sports, IT and physics.

On Thursday 2nd May it was the turn of Year 10 students of Marketing and Media to visit the state-of-the art media centre at Whitely, near Fareham, Hampshire.

With their tutor Chris Kellaway these 14 to 15 year olds were well advanced into a module on Leisure and Tourism, this week with particular emphasis on sponsorship and product placement.

The group of twelve students were shown all the facilities - learning how words and images come direct from the yachts into the centre and then on to the extensive website. They watched the displays, updated every 6 minutes, showing the track of each yacht as they made progress on the current leg from Annapolis USA to La Rochelle in France. Overnight the boat Amer Sports Too under Hampshire skipper Lisa McDonald had suffered a dismasting so there was plenty of activity in getting updated news on the incident around the world to the many countries following the race.

It was then the students' turn to give their ideas on a press release covering their visit.

Flavia Bateson, from the RYA's Southern Region gave the viewpoint of a professional journalist and Race Operation Room Manager David Wise helped iron out any technical queries.

With Cowes Week broadcaster Dick Johnson behind the camera, the students took part in a video press conference from the media centre studio. They were able to put their questions direct to Volvo's Commercial Director Anders Lofgren and they went straight to the point: why had Volvo chosen this event over other sports, how did it help sell cars and finally, was it financially worthwhile? Anders was pleased to confirm that current results showed a massive 55million USdollars in publicity gained through to this stage in the event, following an outlay of 40/50million US dollars - and there are two full legs in the race yet to go.

He emphasised too that the students had an important ambassadorial role to play in telling their friends and families all about the Volvo Ocean Race and spreading the news.

A few miles from the Volvo Ocean Race media centre, Lee-on-Solent Sailing Club is preparing for a major local event with help from the Volvo RYA Sailing Programme when some 200 young sailors compete in the South Zone Championships on 6th and 7th July 2002.