Sailing: Dickson quick to criticise Dalton's win on Endeavour: Beaten Tokio skipper on the attack

TO AN Auckland which turned out in its thousands in the middle of the night to cheer Grant Dalton to a win by 2min 12sec in the third leg of the Whitbread Race, there was no doubt that he and the crew of the maxi, New Zealand Endeavour, were heroes to a man.

But the rival Kiwi who was second, and the winner of the Whitbread 60 class, Chris Dickson, then turned on his fellow Aucklander to launch a scathing and contemptuous attack. 'They didn't sail a very good race,' he said, adding: 'We were actually laughing about it saying, 'Hey, Endeavour, you'd better get in front of us before the finish or you'll look very, very ordinary.'

'If they hadn't beaten us they would have been looking for new jobs, I think,' he said. He also criticised Dalton's and navigator Mike Quilter's tactics, saying of NZE's rounding of Cape Reinga 200 miles from the finish: 'Tactically they really made a big mess of it the last two days. Then they made some really bad errors last night. They went from a mile behind to three miles behind us, just by sailing badly in a two-hour period.'

While also insisting that he was not really racing the maxis anyway, he then turned his attention to the prospect of lodging three protests. The jury, in requiring him to fit his radar permanently, had, he declared, 'made a ruling that was totally false and inappropriate and prejudices our boat.'

He said he might not lodge a protest against Lawrie Smith's Intrum Justitia over the use of illegal metals in the mast but would proceed with a similar complaint against Dennis Conner. 'We've talked to Winston at every single port about it. We don't want to protest, we're not out there to do that, but they've elected not to do anything about it and they should have sorted it out.'

In an already tight situation for the four chasing W60s, at a hearing on Wednesday there will be a request from Dickson and others to reduce the amount of time awarded in Fremantle for going to the aid of Brooksfield when she was in distress.

Matt Humphries said the crew of Britain's Dolphin & Youth, for whom there was an especially warm welcome, said they were pleased with their performance, which put them 10 hours behind Dickson.

WHITBREAD ROUND THE WORLD RACE Third Leg (Fremantle, Aus, to Auckland, NZ) Finishers: 1 New Zealand Endeavour (13 days 8hrs 15min 47sec); 2 Tokio (13:08:17:57); 3 Winston (13:10:57:54); 4 Yamaha (13:11:07:59); 5 La Poste (13:11:35:27); 6 Galicia '93 Pescanova (13:11:35:39); 7 Intrum Justitia (13:13:15:02); 8 Merit Cup (13:16:26:04); 9 Dolphin & Youth (13:18:10:55); 10 Brooksfield (13:22:04:57); 11 Heineken 14:00:08:10. 12 Hetman Sahaidachny, 184 miles to finish; 13 Uruguay Natural 403; 14 Odessa 428.