INTERVIEW: Mirko Gröschner, The Ocean Race 1973 S.L., Alicante
“We have put marine protection at the top of our agenda.”
Mirko Gröschner is responsible for the development of route planning, the acquisition and management of host cities as well as marketing and technology at The Ocean Race 1973. For us as the starting port of Kiel for The Ocean Race Europe 2025, this makes him one of the most important contacts in our planning. We spoke to Mirko about his job, about moments in the race that no scriptwriter could have written more excitingly, about sustainability and marine conservation and about a boat that was lost for 34 days.
Kiel-Marketing: Mirko - route planning, acquisition, management, marketing, technology ... you have a wide range of tasks.
Mirko Gröschner: Yes, but it's all very closely related. Essentially, it's about creating value for the Ocean Race in the event and brand area.
That sounds like you come from a marketing background rather than from the deck of a sailing boat.
I'm a sports marketer and have been for around 25 years. I actually started out in Formula 1 with BMW, then I was lucky enough to get into the Americas Cup with BMW Oracle Racing, where I was active for many years. On the team side as an event promoter, as an agency and I actually got to know all facets of professional sailing.
I've now been in the Ocean Race for almost three years. I had already heard a lot about the Ocean Race during my America's Cup stints, as many sailors have travelled back and forth between the two competitions in the past. Our former skipper and CEO at BMW Oracle, Chris Dickson, competed in several Ocean Races and actually preferred to talk about the race rather than the America's Cup. That's how I got to experience the fascination in a very authentic way many years ago.
So now you've landed in the right harbour.
Yes, it's an exciting job here and it's a great team. It's a lot of fun.
On the one hand, the Ocean Race is a high-performance sport, and on the other, it's about the big issue of marine conservation. It's about the race and "A race we must win". So it's a very close link between the two topics and something that the Ocean Race obviously takes very seriously indeed. In these times of greenwashing, that is not a matter of course.
Because we do indeed have a real problem with our oceans, which many people are not aware of. Just the fact that most of the current global warming is being absorbed by the sea, which means, among other things, that the sea is getting warmer and warmer. The entire biodiversity is changing. Or the issue of plastic waste, because our sailors experience pollution when they sail around the world. Or they see that there are fewer and fewer albatrosses in the Southern Ocean. Of course, they also notice that the iceberg boundary is shifting further north and that there are more icebergs because global warming is causing the icebergs to break off and drift further north. The teams are experiencing this first-hand and, of course, so are we as the supporting organisation. Marine conservation is therefore a task that we take very seriously and have placed at the top of our agenda. We have to do something not only to protect the oceans, but also to restore them to their original state as far as possible. The Ocean Race Europe, which we are launching in Kiel in August 2025, is characterised by various sustainability measures at different levels, for which we act as a platform for all stakeholders and also do a lot ourselves.
As part of the launch event in Kiel, there will be a marine conservation summit, various panels and the topic will also be brought closer to the general public at the Ocean Live Park on the Kiellinie.
People often have little or no knowledge about the function and role of the world's oceans. In many cases, people do not even know what role the oceans play and only really see it when they hear about some natural event in the weather news or about heavy rainfall, which is ultimately due to the warming of the world's oceans. People in coastal regions are more sensitive to the issue because they are directly affected. Above all, our task is to sensitise the many other people inland. To make the topic of the ocean and marine protection understandable and, above all, to show what changes are taking place.
It's about people's actions and the consequences that result from them, from global warming to heavy plastic waste pollution. You have to imagine that we eat plastic the size of a credit card every week because there is so much microplastic in the oceans.
How do you make that visible? How do you make sure that people recognise it and know where it comes from? We have a very strong, science-based programme for this. We use the boats to take water samples with the appropriate equipment, which are then analysed by scientists. This is because our boats travel to areas where no one else can go, which is why these samples are so valuable. This allows us to carry out a series of analyses in areas where no one else goes.
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“The Ocean Race lasts six months, it's not a 90-minute football match.”
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Some of the equipment on board was developed by Geomar in collaboration with Kiel-based companies; there are drifter buoys, Argofloaters and much more. I find it amazing that the teams take the time to take samples or set buoys in this high-performance sport, in which ultimately every nautical mile is fought for. In Formula 1, it would be hard to imagine air samples being taken during the race.
Because our sport is different. And that's also the beauty of it. We have translated this short-term nature of high-performance sport into a long-distance race. The Ocean Race lasts six months, it's not a 90-minute football match. That's what makes this series and this sport so unique. There are times when you only sail across the sea in light winds, and there are times when the teams speed across the Atlantic at 70 or 80 kilometres an hour. But when you spend so much time with yourself and with the sea, you perceive it differently and, above all, you can give something back. And that's the exciting and great thing about the Ocean Race.
It is also interesting that the topic of marine conservation is not only presented to a wide audience in the Ocean Live Parks in the host cities, but that we can all follow what is going on with the teams on board online around the clock.
In today's world, everything takes place in the here and now and everyone wants to know everything at all times and always be right up close – live. We take this idea into account, as do the teams, by having satellite devices on board, which nowadays use high-speed internet connections to show data, images and videos live in perfect quality. Nothing jerks.
A little fun fact: We did a bit of digging in the history of the race and found a report in a brochure from 1973 that one of the teams was lost for 34 days on the way back to England. Today we are sitting in the Race Control Room in Alicante, where all the telemetry data from the boats is collated on screens in real time. We know exactly when to turn, when to heat up and at what speed, and if something goes wrong for 30 seconds, it's off! And in 1973, one of the boats simply disappeared for 34 days. There were no more radio messages from them. They were then searched for by radioing all the boats in the area and saying, if you see a boat, let us know. When they were found, they were surprised and said, hey, sure, we're still in the race, we're going for it! Back then, you could just disappear and not be seen for a month.
Today, you're always in the thick of it and can experience these great stories live. Bringing some of this superhuman performance ashore so that people can get a feel for what the girls and boys on the boats achieve.
I spoke to a lot of people during the 2022/23 race who otherwise have nothing to do with sailing, but who found it really exciting and followed the race via the tracker and social media channels. They saw how Rosalin tumbled out of her bunk, how they had to climb into the mast on the Malizia to repair the crack, that iconic picture of Will Harris holding his black hands up to the camera after a few hours of work 30 metres up in the mast. Or the mast breaks, the whole series of accidents from Team Guyot to the crash off The Hague. People were simply carried away.
The whole thing is a centuries-old dream of mankind to sail around the world. We all live on this planet and every continent is surrounded by water. Even as a child, you had this dream of saying, I'm going to get there somehow.
It used to be much more complicated when there were no flight connections. Today, we can be on the other side of the world in 12 hours, but the ship takes 20 days or longer. And if something happens, there's no help. It's not like in the mountains, where a helicopter can come. You are on your own. Man and the sea. That's when you realise that at a time when everything is super-fast and networked, you're completely alone and basically can't expect to be rescued for weeks. Well, that's the kind of overriding thought that comes into it, which makes the whole thing "scary" in a new German way. You simply have respect for what the teams actually achieve and how they have to overcome themselves to face these dangers.
Which moments do you particularly remember, where did you all share the excitement in Alicante?
What really got to me personally was of course the whole thing with Robert Stanjek and Team Guyot, which was co-managed by Jens Kuphal. They started in Cape Town, then didn't make it across the Southern Ocean because they had problems with the boat and had to turn back. They were back in Itajaí, then their mast broke. Then they picked themselves up again, and finally the crash off The Hague with the eventual winner 11th Racing. This whole story, this whole human dimension for the team, who worked hard the whole time, who always got back on their feet. No scriptwriter could have written it more dramatically. I have to take my hat off to the way the whole team managed to do that again and again ... and lost in the end. That was one of the things that touched me the most.
Then you must have been inspired by something else entirely: the fly-by in Kiel with 120,000 enthusiastic people on the shores and around 3,000 boats on the Kiel Fjord. Did you expect that?
(laughs) To be honest, I wasn't surprised. The enthusiasm we have for sailing in Germany and especially in Kiel is simply outstanding. I've been organising sailing events in Kiel for almost 20 years. For me, Kiel really is the world capital of sailing. We Germans always make ourselves look very, very small and say, well, we don't play any role at all on a global scale. So what? And at the same time, we really do move masses of people because they love the sport, because they love the complexity of sailing. You can see that when you look at the statistics. Germany is always in the top five at all international events and has the highest demand online in the social media sector.
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“We have a whole series of applications from cities all over Europe. But not all cities fulfil our catalogue of criteria.”
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That's why we are all the more delighted that Kiel will be the starting port for the Ocean Race Europe 2025. Because we know this enthusiasm, of course. And because we know that it will be even more spectacular next year compared to the fly-by, because the boats and teams will be right on the keel line in the Ocean Live Park and people will be very close.
That is also very, very important to us. We will make it possible for the fans and visitors to get very close to the boats. We will make sure that we get the teams ashore, that you get to know the people, that you can do something together, with photos, with autographs, with panels and speakers. We want to demonstrate our closeness to the sport and give something back.
It sounds like a no-brainer for Kiel, but it's not that easy to become a host city. How do you go about selecting the other host cities?
Firstly, you need a vision for the route, what do I want to achieve with the race? Secondly, you only have a certain period of time in which the race can take place. The briefing was six weeks so that the boats would be back in France in time for the next regatta. The regatta calendar therefore gives us a specific time slot.
We have a whole series of applications from cities all over Europe. But not all cities fulfil our catalogue of criteria. For example, technical criteria so that we can get the boats into the harbours or out of the water when they need to be serviced or repaired in an emergency. An IMOCA with foils has a span of 18 metres and a draught of five metres. If you have ten boats, you need 180 metres of pontoon length so that all the boats can moor there, and that with a water depth of plus five metres. In addition, the harbours must be on the race route and the boats must be able to get back from the finish harbour to where the next race starts in good time. Other criteria relate to visitor flows, accommodation options, media requirements, etc. etc. If you fulfil the entire catalogue of criteria and also have the corresponding commitment, then you have a good chance of being selected.
See you at the next meeting – and in Kiel in August 2025 at the latest!
I'm really looking forward to the start because, as I said, Kiel is the world capital of sailing with a huge amount of enthusiasm. Of course, we have a real crowd-puller in Boris Herrmann and Team Malizia. But we're also looking forward to talking to lots and lots of people about marine conservation, talking to organisations and political decision-makers in the city, state and at federal level and doing something for our oceans.
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The interview was conducted by Ralf Löwe, Communication & Commercial The Ocean Race Europe/Kiel
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