On December 26, 1998, 115 sailboats set out on the annual race from Sydney to Hobart; only 43 would make it to the Tasmanian city, and six sailors would be dead, the race having turned in the worst modern sailing disaster since the 1979 Fastnet Race. Combining the best elements of The Perfect Storm and Barbarians at the Gate, The Proving Ground is a gripping narrative that follows the fates of three yachts, including Sayonara, owned by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle and the worlds second richest man. From the chilling explanation of how an Olympic sailor came to be catapulted from a yacht and why its crew could do nothing to save him, to the dramatic journey of two leaky life-rafts, The Proving Ground is an exhilarating read. Knechts research, which included eight trips to Australia was unprecedented and exhaustive, involving extensive discussions with both Larry Ellison and Lachlan Murdoch and every survivor with two other yachts. The Proving Ground is destined to be a sporting disaster classic like Into Thin Air and Fastnet Force 10.
G. Bruce Knecht is a former senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and the author of The Proving Ground as well as Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish.
After joining the Journal in 1994, he wrote about the banking industry and pursued investigative projects until 1995 when he began covering publishing--books, magazines, newspapers and the press. In 1998, the Journal nominated his articles about how advertisers and retailers influenced the editorial content of major magazines for two Pulitzer Prizes. The same stories won an award from the University of Missouri Journalism School.
In 1998, Knecht moved to Hong Kong to become the Journal's Asia Correspondent. His article about children of American servicemen who are still living in Vietnam won a Human Rights Press Award.
Knecht took a leave of absence from the Journal to write The Proving Ground, which was initially published in June 2001 by Little, Brown & Company in the United States as well as publishers in several other countries. CNN produced a documentary based on the book. Hooked was published by Rodale and several overseas publishers in 2006 and is currently being developed as a documentary. He is currently at work on a book for Free Press that will describe the design and building of a very large yacht in the context of the recent economic crisis.
From 1981 through 1983, Knecht was a reporter and later an assistant editor for Dun's Review magazine. He joined the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1984 as its senior financial writer and also worked for The New York Times on a free-lance basis from 1982 to 1985. He was a summer associate at Goldman, Sachs & Company in New York in 1985, and in 1986 he became an associate at Tishman Speyer Properties. In 1987, he joined Lincoln Property Company, first as an associate and later a partner.
He was a London-based free-lance writer from 1991 to 1994, focusing on business and economic topics, particularly those involving the collapse of the Soviet Union. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Independent (UK), National Review, Barron's, Conde Nast Traveler, SAIL, and Men's Journal.
Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Knecht received a bachelor's degree from Colgate University and has served on the board of directors of its alumni corporation. He earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University.
An avid sailor, Knecht raced across the Atlantic Ocean on Mari-Cha IV, the yacht that broke the 100-year-old transatlantic race record.
