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George Blake, the race's commercial director, praised it a win-win to bring VOR to China. He showed plenty of statistics to the media on conference to prove that the arrival of VOR will benifit China both economically and on improving the level of the sport sailing.

"The awareness of the race amongst countries like Spain and the United States has raised up 53%, and the global television audience has amount over 1.8 billion with 32 half hour weekly program broadcasting to 192 countries," said Blake while citing the direct expenditure and total impact of the newly-introduced Galicia region in the last race as an example.

"Also the race will help build on China's sailing heritage and presence of sailing through China team in the America's Cup and Beijing Olympics experiences," he said.

"And contrarily, to launch the VOR in China will also boost the race itself," added Blake. "China is an explosively growing market for Volvo.

"Like the Volvo Open golf event, which has just entered its 13th year in China, the Volvo Ocean Race will make Chinese more familiar with the name."

Four coastal cities of China have been listed as candidates to bid for stopovers in the prestigious VOR, and two of them will be selected as the in-port race and hospitality sites in the 2008-2009 seasons.

Qingdao, which will hold the water sports tournaments during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, stays favorite, alongside China's biggest city Shanghai.

"Nothing is decided yet, just as we negotiate with the Chinese part while looking at a number of coastal cities in China," said Bourke. "We'll select the suitable sites according to the wind conditions."

"It would be logical to visit Qingdao, the sailing site during the Beijing Olympics, and in the spot functionally they work for the race," he added.

According to the organizers, the host city has to meet certain criteria. Economic development level, construction of port facilities, commercial and cultural influence of the city, expertise for organizing the stopover and the in-port race will be taken into consideration.

The 2008-2009 race will start from Alicante Port, Spain in October 2008, going through Africa, Middle East, Asia, South America, North America, Europe to a Baltic port finish. The 10-member crews race aboard the Volvo Open 70, the fastest monohull ocean racing yacht in the world.

The fleet will arrive in China around the spring festival in 2009 and stay for about three weeks during which various activities such as in-port race between the fleet will take place.