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Sailing: GBR Challenge's winning run ends

Stuart Alexander
Tuesday 29 October 2002 01:00 GMT
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There was just too much firepower out against Britain's GBR Challenge for the America's Cup as their four-race winning streak hit the buffers yesterday against the joint leaders in the Louis Vuitton Cup, the OneWorld Challenge from Seattle.

In the fresh 15 to 17 knot south-westerly, the starting helmsman Andy Beadworth did a good job of wriggling away from a clamp that OneWorld helmsman James Spithill had tried to apply. He was also able to hand over to his skipper, Ian Walker, with a slight advantage, at speed and at the left-hand end, for which he had been fighting. GBR was also just ahead as the two boats came together to cross each other for the first time.

But in the drag race of the next 15 minutes, OneWorld pulled away, opening a 35-second lead round the first upwind mark, which exceeded 40 seconds after the first downwind leg. At the end of the shortened, four-leg, 12.5-mile course the margin was 65 seconds.

Sweden's Victory Challenge was untroubled by Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes as was Switzerland's Alinghi by Mascalzone Latino. But Prada had to recover from an early deficit to the French.

GBR's chance to put things back on a winning track was then lost as their afternoon match with Le Defi Arvea was postponed. The French pulled out with gear damage and Prada, too, similarly withdrew from their match with Alinghi. Which did not help an organisation trying to catch up after losing three consecutive days of round robin two.

"You can't keep changing your mind'," said Larry Ellison last week when announcing that he was bringing in Chris Dickson to run the Oracle BMW show in place of the man whose praises he had earlier been singing, Peter Holmberg. But Oracle came out for the second race of the day against Stars & Stripes with Ellison off the boat ­ he was part of the afterguard whose communication skills he was also criticising ­ and Holmberg was back on as helmsman. Dickson was there as skipper, a man well known for his ability to communicate his thoughts.

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