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The Volvo Ocean Race practically dares you to give a damn. It

involves the niche-est of niche sports (round-the-world yacht racing) where the

majority of the action takes place in the middle of nowhere (the middle of the

ocean), carried out by athletes you’ve never heard of (quick, name another world-class sailor other than Dennis Conner), on a handful of multi-million-dollar boats ($10

million or so to build), competing in a single race that’s longer than most

sports seasons (nine months) and occurs almost as infrequently as the Olympic

Games (every three years). Sounds as irresistible as Christopher Cross. More To Sea! Click here to see a slideshow of images shot on board the $10 million-plus boats in the Volvo Ocean Race. And yet the Volvo Ocean Race, which arrived Wednesday in Miami

for a 10-day stopover, is using technology cleverly to outmaneuver those

shortcomings. Its website is focused on bridging the distance–physical and

otherwise–between spectators and the action in ways that other sports could learn from.

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Start with the breathtaking on-board video, like the clip below of a wave

engulfing the Telefonica boat. The clip went viral (nearly 500,000 views) after

fans shared and embedded it everywhere. Unlike sports

leagues that are restricted by various broadcast contracts and often wary of rocking the corporate boat, this nautical marathon embraces social media as much as any sport. In addition to the 11-person sailing crew, each boat has a

media crew member. He shoots photos and video and records audio dispatches, chronicling

the grueling work of sailing 24 hours a day: the four-hour shifts on deck; the extreme

weather, from snow storms near South Africa to brutal heat during multiple

equatorial crossings; the three or so weeks at sea on each of the nine legs,

during which sailors consume around 5,000 calories a day and still lose 20 or

so pounds. “I don’t think another sport puts a journalist at the heart of the

sporting action,” says Kevin Fylan, who covered sports for Reuters and works as

editorial chief for the race site. “They’re there to tell the story.” In the 1980s, sailboats reported their location once a week.

(Try following that race). Today’s media crew members file continuously, and Fylan’s

team pieces together dispatches from the different boats to weave a beautifully

shot narrative of the action:

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The Volvo Ocean Race staff has created a number of nifty tools to

translate reams of data into meaningful information for fans. The race tracker showed

the boats’ real-time progress from Itajai, Brazil, to Miami the past few weeks

and is loaded with all sorts of bells and whistles. A sliding toolbar traces

each boat’s path, revealing its different routes in pursuit of the best wind.

A geo-content button displays icons for photos, audio, or video posted en route.

A spherical view shows a global map, conveying the enormity of the

39,000-nautical-mile circumnavigation. A digital ruler measures the distance

between boats. On Wednesday, it showed just five nautical miles separating

first-place Puma (led by skipper Ken Read) and second-place Camper (led by

skipper Chris Nicholson), a nail-biting finish. (Now you know two more world-class

sailors.) “We’re able to see this race and learn more about the environment

than before–the wave height, wind speed, boat speed, the angle of the

keel,” says Marion Brennan, the race’s online chief for the past decade. “The most rabid racing fans want this. We have to find the balance–how much is too much. We don’t want to turn off

people new to the sport.” This year’s race has provided plenty of drama to draw in

newbies. The boats set sail last November from Alicante, Spain, heading for Cape

Town, and within the first 10 hours two vessels were badly damaged. A boat

repair team immediately hopped a plane to South Africa. A 100-foot mast had to

be flown in as well. Team Telefonica, however, “took off like Usain Bolt,” says

Fylan. It won the first three legs, racking up a big points lead. Since then,

three other competitors have gradually made up ground through the in-port

racing competitions and the other legs. With the conclusion of leg six in Miami, the competition is suddenly a three- and perhaps a four-boat race.

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It’s exciting stuff. No wonder pageviews on the site and

media coverage have already matched the levels for the entire race last time. Following

the boats between Brazil and the U.S., it was hard not to imagine how these

various tools could be applied to the basketball or hockey playoffs or the

baseball season. A tracker you could position to show the position of players or the ball or puck on any given play or throughout the game? Hope the NBA,

NHL, and MLB are watching–and willing to test the waters. Follow Chuck Salter and Fast Company on Twitter. [Image: Volvo Ocean Race]