This marks the beginning of the port announcement process with the rest of the course due to be revealed before the end of March.
"We have received port bids from many different cities, each with their own cultures, specialities and challenges," said CEO Knut Frostad. "We have taken our time to evaluate carefully over 80 bids from ports around the world who wanted to host the event, before making our decisions.”
Leg one from Alicante to Cape Town, a distance of 6,500 nautical miles, is one of the longest in the race and historically, the team that wins this leg has gone on to claim the overall trophy.
“We are delighted that after a year of negotiations, Cape Town has once again been selected as the first port of call in this prestigious ocean race. As the past few stopovers have proved, the race is a superb platform to achieve business tourism and sporting objectives for Cape Town and the Western Cape” said Bruce Parker-Forsyth, CEO of The Volvo Ocean Race Cape Town Stopover and Worldsport, the project management company behind the last four stopovers.
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