Trench foot and broken bones

A 396

Veteran Whitbread/Volvo Race skipper Grant Dalton has announced he will retire from the Volvo Ocean Race at the end of this race in Kiel, Germany, later this year. Dalton has won three Whitbreads, as the Volvo Race was formerly known, and claimed second place twice. At press time, his yacht Amer Sports One was in second place prior to the start of the leg between Rio de Janeiro and Miami.

Dalton suffered a severe bout of trench foot — a pre-frostbite condition that includes infection and can cause permanent nerve damage — and took a fall that broke several vertebrae and some ribs on the race legs between Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. (To see some ghastly images of what trench foot looks like, visit this website: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWfoot.htm, and you'll appreciate one reason to never sail again in the Southern Ocean.) Dalton said he will not retire from round-the-world racing entirely; he will likely have an entry in the next Race, the no-limits, crewed race around the world, which will run next in 2004. Dalton skippered Club Med in the last Race, claiming first place.

By Ocean Navigator