“One is only this happy knowing that one has done a good job. One does not have to win trophies to feel such satisfaction. If the fight has been hard and one has sailed a boat well, then everything is as it should be,” wrote Sven Salén in reference to the Gold Cup race in Hankö, Norway, a few years later in 1933. He was a true competitor but also a lover of the outdoors and seems to have found in sailing a way to combine nature experience with excitement.

You might wonder how a successful and thus busy industrialist could devote so much time to a hobby. The weeks, even months, that Sven was out of the office would, in today’s pitiless world of commerce, have skewed daily routines deeply. 

“Dad had time for lots of things without stressing,” remembers son Sven Hampus.

Read the chapter (the book opens in a new tab)