The new ship is part of a radical transformation of the Volvo that will be presented in Gothenburg (Photo Vanessa Zanni)

As the teams already registered prepare for the departure of the next 22 October and the announcements of new teams are taking shape to complete the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18, the race's leaders work in parallel to design the future. The 14th edition of the race, the next one that begins this year, will host the premiere of a new monotype designed by the French Guillaume Verdier and built under the direction of the Italian shipyard Persico, as announced on Thursday the organization of the event. Verdier thus joins the design team of the Volvo Ocean Race and is already working with the race in the crucial decision whether the next ship will be a monotype or a multicasco. The final decision will be announced on 18 May in Gothenburg, the city of Volvo, the owner and main sponsor of the race.

Verdier has been the designer who, discreetly, has been involved in most of the best designs in recent years, from giant multicascos such as the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild of the Gitana team, which will be launched in July, going through the flying multicascos of Team New Zealand in the current Copa América, to huge monocascos such as the Comanche or the best IMOCA 60 of the Vendée Globe as the Hugo Boss and the Banque Populaire VIII. The debate between the choice of a monocasque or a multicasque is only one of a number of important decisions to be taken in the coming weeks and to be announced in an event on 18 May in Gothenburg. This series of ads will form the most radical transformation of the Volvo Ocean Race since it was born in 1973 with the name Whitbread Round the World Race.

On the decision that it is Persico who leads the construction of the ships, instead of the shipyard consortium that was used for the Volvo Ocean 65, Nick Bice, Chief Technical Development Officer, said: "The consortium did a good job, but we prefer to hire on this occasion the only shipyard that will surely subcontract other shipyards around the world to get the construction done on time and in line with the budget. Persico has been a very important partner in recent years and we are delighted to work with them again". The race bet on Verdier after inviting half a dozen of the world's best designers to make their contributions, including Farr Yatch Design, which was the study that inaugurated the monotype era by designing the successful Volvo Ocean 65.

The decision to maintain the concept of monotype comes after the introduction of the Volvo Ocean 65 in the Volvo Ocean Race of 2014-15, which resulted in the most equal competition in the history of the race. In the next edition, which will start on October 22 in Alicante, the same Volvo Ocean 65 will be used that have experienced a remodeling of a million euros per boat at the Boatyard facilities in Lisbon. These ships were designed to be fast and reliable enough to hold at least two turns to the world at the highest level in an optimal state. The seven ships that formed the fleet in 2014-15 will be completed by a new unit completely equal to the previous ones, which has been assigned to Team Akzonobel for the edition of 2017-18. When there are still six months to go, four teams have already been announced. The remaining projects will be announced in the coming months.