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The Greatest Hardest Sports Journalism Job in the World

June 6th, 2016 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, The National, Volvo Ocean Race

It is a great job: Recording the highs and lows of a Volvo Ocean Race sailing team during a nine-month circumnavigation of the planet.

It is a horrific job: During the 40,000 or so nautical miles of the journey, the onboard VOR reporter will encounter heaving seas, deep cold, blistering heat and the spartan living arrangements of a 65-foot boat.

It has been called “the toughest job in sports media”, and it has to be.

And now organizers of the 2017-18 edition of the race are looking for people who would like to be an onboard reporter for one of the competing boats.

The call to the sea comes in this linked video, which you ought to watch, entitled, “If you died tomorrow …”

We at The National in Abu Dhabi closely followed the past two editions of the Volvo Race — because Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing had a boat, Azzam, in each race.

In perhaps the most globally significant sports success in the history of the UAE, Abu Dhabi won the 2014-15 edition of the race, finishing ahead of the seven-boat fleet with Englishman Ian Walker as skipper and Matt Knighton as the onboard reporter who shipped news and video from the middle of oceans as well as dockside.

I would like to say I could handle the Volvo onboard reporter job, but I know I could not. I get seasick on a pond.

The Volvo race calls for crossing four oceans and touching five continents, and I would be heaving from the opening hours, and sick to death of being soaked with seawater hour after hour, day after day.

Plus, it’s just plain dangerous: Sailors have died during the history of this race, swept overboard by rogue waves.

The reporting side of it is daunting, too. Shooting video every day, taking photos, writing profiles of the sailors, posting to a blog — all of it via a satellite link from each boat, which are fitted with state-of-the-art equipment, remote-control cameras, microphones and custom-designed media stations.

No doubt, the logistics of that are daunting. And that’s the “easy” part. Surviving the journey is something 99.99 percent of sports journalists could not handle.

Amory Ross, an onboard reporter for the past two Volvo races, told the VOR website: “For a professional storyteller, I’m certain that there’s no greater challenge on earth than this.

“You are pushed far beyond your physical, mental and creative limits in a way that can compare with little else.”

Leon Sefton, who is leading the recruiting drive for 2017-18 onboard reporters, said: “We’re looking for candidates with an adventurous streak but also with a history of solid media experience, an eye for a shot and a nose for a story.

“It cannot be underestimated how tough this role is to perform, day in, day out, in boat-breaking conditions and with little to no sleep.”

And if you want difficult in one more way … the onboard reporter is not allowed to be involved in sailing the boat, but he is expected to prepare daily food bags for the crew, help with the desalination of seawater and hump around the equipment below decks, according to Matt Knighton, the Abu Dhabi team’s onboard reporter in 2014-15.

The number of boats that will participate in the 2017-18 Volvo race has not been divulged. Abu Dhabi, however, is out, after fulfilling a commitment to do two races.

The shape of the race is firming up, however, with nine ports of call confirmed: Alicante, Spain; Lisbon, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Auckland, Newport, Rhode Island; Cardiff, Wales; Goteborg, Sweden; and The Hague, in the Netherlands.

(Yes, at the moment the leg from New Zealand to Rhode Island is insanely long and probably would require a re-victualing stop somewhere in, say, Argentina or Brazil.)

If you have multimedia journalism talents, and can stand up to the rigors of nine months and 40,000 … this could be the job for you.

If you fall among the masses of the rest of us … stick to football and baseball and dry land.

 

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