John was asked in 2005 to chair the vision group for the redevelopment of the Galway Docklands. A group comprising of the Galway Harbour Company, Galway City Council, Fáilte Ireland West and the Galway Chamber, it "looked at what might be possible for the Docklands".

Reporting within months, the committee found that the first priority was the relocation of the oil tanks on the docks. Action has been taken on this to date, and John says, it's hoped that the tanks will be relocated by the end of 2008. The next challenge, he says, was to redevelop the docks in their entirety.

"The Volvo Ocean Race bid came out of that vision," says John. "I was sailing in France with Jamie Boag (now skipper of the Green Team) and I was asking him how he thought we could push the city towards the sea. Jamie's wife was associated with Volvo, they had sponsored her two Olympic bids, where she won two gold medals, and we approached Volvo Ocean Racing about it."

Glenn Bourke, then CEO of the VOR, came to Galway to see the lie of the land.

"Glenn was initially very conscious that there was no stopover in Great Britain or mainland France. He had a fantastic gravitas for Ireland, his kids had Irish names, one of them is called Shannon after the river, so the door was already open.

"We brought him to Galway, we put him up in the g, and we took him by executive helicopter around the bay. As we say in the West, he was mightily impressed," remembers John. "I took him down Shop Street that day, it was a Wednesday, and there were buskers there. He asked me 'did you arrange that?!'"

"At that stage they were finalising the course for the race, they wanted to involve Asia this time so the changing of the course created the perfect opportunity to get Galway in."

And the rest, as they say, is history. The Galway stopover, launched two weeks ago to huge fanfare, is now well underway, with plans in train to build a huge structure on the docks, to build berthing facilities for the boats and for a huge two-week festival, "bringing the Irish 'craic' to the race," says John.

Besides the event itself, John and the team are hoping to raise awareness of sailing in Ireland, and of 'Ireland Inc', across the world. They are also hoping the race will leave Galway with the marine infrastructure to make it the sailing power they know it can become.

"Our priority is to make sure that we do this properly and take as much as possible out of it, in the context of putting as much as we can into it."

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