The Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 is the world's premier yacht race for professional racing crews and will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon.  Starting from Alicante in Spain the race spans some 37,000 nautical miles, stopping at 11 ports and taking nine months to complete.

The first race - originally known as The Whitbread Round the World Race - left England in September 1973 and was a name conceived over a pint of beer. 

The race will stopover in Galway from Saturday 23rd May to Saturday 6th June 2009.




Each leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 re-starts from the following ports on the following dates:

Alicante, 11 October 2008
Cape Town, 15 November 2008
Kochi (India), 13 December 2008
Singapore, 18 January 2009
Qingdao, 14 February 2009
Rio De Janeiro, 11 April 2009
Boston, 16 May 2009
Galway, 6 June 2009
Göteborg, 14 June 2009
Stockholm, 25 June 2009
St Petersburg, 27 June 2009

Whats on offer?

·     For all the family - street theatre performances in the Race Village and on the Green Dragon route by Arcana, Buí Bolg, Luxe and Tumble Circus, a Promenade Beach Party, Lá Gaeilge, Galway Community Circus, the Volvo Ocean Race experience including the simulator, model boat racing, the grinder challenge and the Dome, air display by the Red Arrows and two world record attempts.

·     For concert goers - free concerts by the Hothouse Flowers, Sharon Shannon, Aslan, The Stunning, Kila, The Coronas, Lucia Evans and lots more...

·     For art lovers - trail with 18 exhibitions around the city with a maritime theme including exhibitions and talks at Galway City Museum.

·     For food lovers - the best of West of Ireland food at the Race Village and a good variation of cuisine on offer throughout  restaurants in the city.

·     For sailors- see the might of the Volvo Open 70's up close and your chance to see some of the world's leading ocean sailors. Take the PUMA Mast Challenge. Participate in some fringe sailing events such as the GB09 Cruiser Championships and junior sailing events.  View traditional boat racing on Galway Bay.

·     For school children - visit Galway on your school tour and visit the Galway Atlantaquarium

 
Full programme details available on www.galwayvolvooceanrace.com

About the Volvo Ocean Race Festival

Galway Volvo Ocean Race have unveiled their plans for two action-packed weeks of sailing, music, spectacle, culture and craic from 23 May to 06 June 2009.

The Galway Volvo Ocean Race Festival will be the biggest free festival ever to be hosted in Ireland and an expected 200,000 people are expected to visit Galway during the two week festival. Fáilte Ireland on behalf of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism are the principal sponsors of the Galway stopover and supported the bid for the Volvo Ocean Race to come to Galway.

The Volvo Ocean Race only stopover in Ireland and the UK is Galway.

Commenting today, Martin Cullen, T.D. Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism said: 'I am delighted that we have attracted such a high profile event to Ireland, the largest international sporting event for Irish tourism since the Ryder cup in 2006. Through the efforts of Fáilte Ireland at home and Tourism Ireland abroad, the maritime city of Galway, as part of the global network of the Race's ocean ports, is set to provide a fortnight of festival events during the stopover of what is the world's premier sailing event. This festival programme, which includes a number of traditional and contemporary cultural events, will  showcase Ireland's unique tourism offering to Galway visitors, both from home and abroad.'

The fleet of Volvo Open 70 yachts will arrive in Galway Bay the weekend of 23/24 May to be greeted by a traditional Irish welcome of bonfires on the coastline, a drumming and pyrotechnic fanfare as they cross the finish line at Mutton island and a hearty feed of Irish produced food as they complete leg 7 from Boston in the Volvo Ocean Race which commenced in Alicante, Spain in October 2008.

The Volvo Ocean Race is the premier race for professional crews around the world and this event is ranked as the sixth biggest sporting event in the world which is viewed by 1.8 billion people worldwide. When the fleet reaches Galway the boats and their crew will have endured 8 months at sea and over 35,000 nautical miles in temperatures ranging from -5 to +50 degrees Celsius in a cramped carbon fibre boat. The sailors will have put themselves under the same level of mental and physical duress as a soldier on the front line of a war zone - at times 2,500 miles from the nearest landfall, contending with mountainous seas, 70 knot winds, and the constant pounding of the waves.

Galway has been preparing for 18 months to host a worldclass festival to welcome this prestigious sporting event to Ireland. The event will officially open on Sunday 24 May with a spectacular opening ceremony sponsored by Galway City Council at 10pm. The opening ceremony will be produced by Arcana who have previously presented the opening ceremonies for the Special Olympics 2003 and the Ryder Cup 2006. The production will also feature a performance by Frankie Gavin who has performed at numerous State events during his career such as President John F. Kennedy's historic visit to Ireland in 1962, and visits by French President Francois Mitterand and Great Britain's Prince Charles.

The Volvo Ocean Race started in Spain in October 2008 and visited new ports in this edition of the race including a new route through Asia taking in the ports of Cochin in India, Singapore and Qingdao in China. After China the fleet sailed to Rio de Janeiro via Cape Horn and the infamous Southern Ocean where Galway's entry Green Dragon was the only yacht to encounter icebergs.

After Rio de Janeiro the fleet will race to Boston arriving 27 April. Tourism Ireland, the organisation responsible for promoting the island of Ireland overseas as a holiday destination will capitalise on the Volvo Ocean Race in this key market for tourism by hosting a range of trade, consumer and publicity initiatives.

'Tourism Ireland has undertaken a major international marketing programme to fully capitalise on the tourism business potential emanating from the Galway stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race in May.  This event attracts huge publicity around the world and is an ideal opportunity for Tourism Ireland to showcase Galway, water sports in Ireland, and more generally the many attractions that the island of Ireland has to offer as a holiday destination.' stated Paul O'Toole, CEO, Tourism Ireland.

After Galway the fleet will race to Marstrand and Stockholm, Sweden before finishing the race in St Petersburg, Russia at the end of June 2009.

Some of the logistics include marshalling up to 500 vessels on the water to welcome and say farewell to the race with the assistance of 40 official RIBS (rigid inflatable boats), provision of almost 1km of pontoons for berthing boats, 2,000 metres of cabling for the village and 1,000 metres of fencing. The organizers of the event, Let's Do It Galway have been working with the Galway Harbour Company to ensure the success of the on water logistics.

Éamon Bradshaw, CEO of Galway Harbour Company stated 'We are delighted to be part of the Galway Volvo Ocean Race Stopover. Galway Harbour Company are working with Let's Do It Galway to host a fun packed fortnight of sea and land based events for Galwegians and tourists alike and to ensure the safety of all in the bay area over the two week event.'

It is anticipated that Galway will attract up to 200 International media and will be an ideal opportunity to showcase the best of Ireland as a tourism destination. The visiting journalists will include a group of 30 travel journalists from around the world hosted by Failte Ireland. As part of the media programme there will be 100 hours of helicopter flight time over Galway Bay for photojournalists and broadcast media.

Chairman of 'Let's do it Galway' John Killeen said "We are proud to be hosting a global sporting event such as the Volvo Ocean Race which will be watched by a worldwide audience of over 1.8 billion. Let's do it Galway has been working with Fáilte Ireland and the local administrative and State agencies - Galway City Council, Galway Harbour Company and Fáilte Ireland West to make the visit of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 the most successful free sporting event in the history of the State".

The key weekends for the festival are the arrivals (23-24 May), the inport racing weekend with viewing from Salthill Promenade (30-31 May) and the departures on Saturday (06 June).

Full festival details are available at www.galwayvolvooceanrace.com where you will also get up to the minute information on the arrivals of the yachts over the weekend of 23/24 May.

Jealous Guy
Telephone Line
My Friends
Nothing Rhymed
Strange Glue
Something In The Air
Quicksand
Goodnight Saigon
All I Want Is You
Maggie May


The Ali AslanUNCASE'd album will come with a special bonus CD of Aslan performance at last years OXYGEN festival  This was the band's first time playing at Oxegen and the amazing atmosphere is captured on this 8-track live CD.
  Says Christy: "We have always put cover songs on the B sides of our singles since we started out and we have always wanted to release a covers album; we felt now was the right time as it follows on from our last studio album 'For Some Strange Reason" released in 2007.

Watch Aslan "Made in Dublin".




Aslan enjoy a loyal and passionate fanbase that other bands would kill for. Their 2005 'Platinum Collection' a 3CD boxset of their hits, b-sides and previously unreleased material, enjoyed massive success, going Triple Platinum within weeks of it's release.  Equally as comfortable playing to a few hundred loyal fans in a country bar as they are selling out The Point Theatre, the hardest working Irish band in show business never forget the support and love of their fans, touring constantly up and down the country to perform their now legendary live sets.  

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"KNOW YOUR ENEMY" AVAILABLE TO FOR DOWNLOAD VIA iTUNES THURSDAY APRIL 16TH 2009.

21st Century Breakdown, which will be released worldwide on May 15th, is the best-selling trio's first studio album since 2004's two-time Grammy Award-winning punk-rock opera American Idiot, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, spawned five hit singles, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide.

Regarding the pressure to follow up American Idiot, Billie Joe Armstrong said, "We could take a sideways step or go back to our roots. We chose to move forward. It's about reflecting what's been happening the past three years and putting it to melody with some bold statements." The band has also stated that "This album is more religious," and it is influenced by Queen, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, The Beatles, and The Clash
In a recent feature, Rolling Stone called 21st Century Breakdown "even more ambitious than American Idiot" and "a record of die-hard punk ideals...tightly scripted, continually ascending classic-rock excitement."
Singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool have been at work writing, arranging, and recording 21st Century Breakdown since early 2006 and are currently making finishing touches with producer Butch Vig, who is known for his work with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, and many others.
The video for "Know Your Enemy," which was directed by Matthew Cullen of Motion Theory, will air exclusively on MTV, VH1, The N, Palladia, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s, MTV Hits, MTV.com, VH1.com, as well as on MTV and VH1's international channels, on Friday, April 24th, at 8 p.m. (international premiere times to be announced locally), making it the first global cross-channel video premiere for MTV and VH1 networks.

Ninety seconds of "Know Your Enemy" was used as the opening tease of CBS Sports' 2009 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game on April 6th. The music montage previewed the contestants in the 2009 NCAA title game.


GREEN DAY last toured in 2004 till 2006 and played over 150 shows on a world wide tour which grossed over $232 million - The 3rd highest grossing tour for that period after U2 and The Rolling Stones.

Irish sales for American idiot are just as impressive - It's certified 8 times platinum to date and reached no.1 on the Irish album charts.