Above Tracy Edwards speaking in Qatar - photo Quest. Below Club Med - photo Carlo Borlenghi

Pindar’s loan was supposed to be a short term one, 2 weeks to be precise, but it was to be more than 2 years before - after instigating court proceedings - he was paid back.

At the end of November 2004, Andrew Pindar issued this statement "I am delighted to confirm that Tracy Edwards has made a full repayment of all money outstanding. I recognise that the legal action we took in September in order to formalise our agreement with Tracy created an unfortunate and regrettable public dispute, but I would like to make clear that it has always been our desire to see Tracy succeed in her ambitions.”

As we jointly stated in September, when a schedule for repayment was formally agreed, neither party was in disagreement over the repayment of the loan. All concerned are delighted that the matter can now be drawn to a close. We wish Tracy well for the forthcoming Oryx Cup, which I'm sure will be a great success."

"We have great admiration for her tenacity and bravery, and are thankful of the opportunities she has provided other people in sailing."

Prior to the settlement, Tracy Edwards had said she wanted to thank Andrew Pindar and the Pindar Group for their continued understanding, recognising that it was “their financial support and Andrew's enthusiasm for the sport of ocean sailing” that enabled her team to break four world sailing records in 2002. She was rather less grateful when, in February 2005, she told the BBC “I owed 60 people money and only three of them took me to court, the rest were very supportive. People who have loaned me money are very well aware that sailing is by no means an exact science and sometimes it takes a long time to be paid back," she said. "I was especially disappointed with Andrew Pindar. It made my life a misery and I hated every minute of it.”

The beginning of the end

In 2004, Sports Impact, which had handled the event where the £38 million Qatari sponsorship was announced, took two of Edwards’ companies to court.

Edwards countered with talk of vigorously defending the case and issued this statement “Maiden Ocean Racing and Maiden Ocean Racing Qatar (two dormant shelf companies with no assets) are currently in litigation with a company called Sports Impact re invoices they claim we owe and that we dispute. Maiden Ocean Racing and Maiden Ocean Racing Qatar do not and have never had any contracts with Sports Impact or any other company for that matter. The two companies have not and have never had a deal with Qatar and are not involved in the events in any way. They were bought off the shelf to protect the names.”

Sports Impact's chairman John Taylor was scathing when interviewed by the Daily Telegraph, telling the newspaper "Vigorously defended? We've heard nothing, we feel we've been used. We feel deeply disappointed it's come to this but we've been left with no choice. It took six weeks to get a meeting with her and, six weeks after that, there's still no offer."

Despite Edwards talk of vigorous defence and the lack of a contract with Sports Impact, her lawyers made an agreement to pay Sports Impact part of the sums claimed, but the agreed payments were only made in part and, in the end, a High Court order, last July, awarded Sports Impact £18,000 from Quest, which was then put into administration. Taylor was not subdued about his pyrrhic victory saying he had continued with the action out of concern that “the sport of ocean racing has been damaged and people are reluctant to get involved because of the actions of one person."

This is not the first time that Peyron has been outspoken in his views of Tracy Edwards’ conduct and we must wait and see whether he gets more sympathy this time round.

The last occasion was shortly after Edwards had announced, in a ceremony that included a photo call with the Duke of York, that Qatar was to sponsor two round-the-world sailing events to the tune of £38 million, so it is hardly surprising that most of the yachting press showed little sympathy for the views Peyron expressed in this statement.

“The sailor Tracy Edwards has just announced that she will organise, in partnership with Qatar, two round the world crewed sailboat races: the first in 2005, without stop-overs and reserved for maxi multi-hulls; the second scheduled for 2006 and open to both maxi multi-hulls ( over 100 feet) and maxi mono-hulls ( over 110 feet ) with stop-overs in Asia and America. These two projects are thinly disguised copies of the concepts from The Race and The Race Tour, which were imagined, conceived and developed by The Race Event. The English sailor also announced that the winner of the Jules Verne Trophy will receive a financial prize.

This announcement, which curiously was made hardly a week after the postponement of the 2004 edition of The Race (non-stop round the world race, reserved for maxi multi-hulls), did not fail to astonish Bruno Peyron, founder and organiser of The Race, cofounder and current record holder of the Jules Verne Trophy. Effectively, what Tracy Edwards has just announced is nothing other than the exact copy of the very concept and philosophy of The Race and The Race Tour, events imagined, conceived and developed over 10 years and with substantial investment by The Race Event.

Bruno Peyron : "I am astounded by the contempt, hypocrisy and especially the dishonesty of the project's promoters. Tracy Edward's team regularly attended all of the challengers meetings that we organised for The Race and The Race Tour in Paris for two years with a view to her participation therein. I am forced to acknowledge that these people, who had our complete confidence, were provided all the benefit of our work, know how, data bases, expertise, and our help, have taken advantage of all this in order to launch these events which, more than competing with our own, are a virtual counterfeit of our ideas, concepts and our accumulated work for over 10 years. I find this attitude no less than shocking, dishonest and unworthy of the values that The Race has defended since its inception (openness, tolerance, humanity, respect, exchange...).

This project is all the more improper as it was led without the slightest consultation with the principal challengers, in the most suspicious secrecy and under the initiative of persons having no prior competence in organising international events of this dimension. Moreover, in regards to the proposal to endow the Jules Verne Trophy with a cash prize, Tracy Edward's team has launched this project without any prior consultation with the founding members of the Jules Verne Trophy (including me) and in contempt of the spirit of the association which owns the rights. The association asserts its entire liberty with respect to sponsoring and has always refused to associate a brand with the event ! This behaviour is completely irresponsible and inadmissible. Needless to say, The Race Event, owner of The Race and The Race Tour events and related intellectual property rights, reserves the right to pursue this matter by all legal means available. We will keep all concerned parties informed of the development of this matter."

Bruno Peyron

Few sailing media outlets, outside France, published Peyron’s statement and, of those that did, several took care to distance themselves and their publication. Yachting Universe published, but added “His words and not ours!” The Editor of Scuttlebutt was even more forthright saying “In no way, shape or form do I endorse the views expressed in the following press release distributed to the world's press this past weekend. I personally think that Mr. Peyron will rue the day he hit the Send button on this, rather than just letting it sit on his laptop or quietly handing it off to his solicitors if that was the path he really wanted to take. I have invited Ms. Edwards to respond.”

It was more than a year before any publication was quite so forthright in speaking in favour of Peyron’s The Race and against Edward’s Oryx Cup. Presenting its annual Sailing Awards, the irreverent Sailing Anarchy gave Edwards an award for the Worst Multihull Effort; “Tracy Edwards, while putting the Oryx Cup in direct competition with the forebearer of the giant multihulls, The Race, she put the course of The Race in the relatively unknown and most treacherous ice fields of the South Atlantic and the majority of the course through the Indian Ocean, so much hated by all ocean racers. All to please an Arab country sponsor with no long term vision or convictions. In the process, she failed to timely pay her creditor, one of the greatest supporters of our sport Andrew Pindar, for the purchase of one of the G-cats for her abandoned Maiden II campaign and forced the matter into court and eye of the publicity. She lowered the safety standards for the Oryx Cup by allowing the boats to remove the propellers. The net result is the cancellation of an existing global event, The Race, and its substitution with an event with lower safety standards, no track record, poor and potentially unsafe course selection designed solely to satisfy the sponsor and an assembly of hurried secondhand vessels for a pointless exercise in Indian Ocean bashing.”

A nation state brought into disrepute

That Sailing Anarchy statement “All to please an Arab country sponsor with no long term vision or convictions” is a telling one for, wittingly, or unwittingly, Tracy Edwards has achieved something few individuals, if any, have ever achieved before; she has brought a nation state into disrepute. So what was the Qatari role in all this?

Edwards has claimed that, early in 2003, she went to Qatar in search of funding and met Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is now the Crown Prince, and that she was persuaded to organise two round-the-world races in the Gulf state, to be backed by Qatar Sports International, the commercial arm of the Qatar National Olympic Committee.

Gregory Browne, the former Quest Financial Director, whose claim against Edwards brought about her personal bankruptcy, doubts this. Browne says that, during the run up to the Oryx Cup, he and Edwards went to a meeting with the Prince, who looked at Edwards and said “Haven’t we met before? Ah yes, I remember now, I shook your hand at an Olympic event.”

If there ever was a £38 million sponsorship deal with Qatar, there is little evidence of it.

Gregory Browne is just one of those who is convinced that no such deal was ever made.

The most commonly expressed opinion is that something like the following scenario took place: Edwards suggested the dual race programme to Qataris, who would have asked for more details and passed these to business advisors whilst, in typical polite Arab fashion, expressing interest. Edwards, taking polite murmurings to mean it was only a matter of time before they agreed, felt that making an announcement would bring forward agreement, especially if someone as high profile as the Duke of York was on hand at the time, and went ahead.

That is pure speculation, what is fact is that the present Crown Prince was in attendance when Edwards introduced potential entrants and her new sponsor HSBC and that his brother, the former Crown Prince Jassim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, presented the winning crew with an empty golden envelope, rather than the expected £500,000 cheque.

Like it, or not, sponsor, or not, high profile Qataris have played some role in this saga and it would be in its own best interests if the nation state of Qatar explained just what that rôle was.

There is much more that could be said, no doubt much more will be said. For now, we hope that what has been said here will be enough to start repairing the damage this affair has done to the sport of ocean racing.

Marian Martin