Sailing: Next Around Alone race to be cut by two months

Passions were running high in the usually quiet New Zealand port of Tauranga yesterday as the 10 remaining competitors, including Britain's Emma Richards, set off yesterday in a brisk breeze for the fourth leg of the Around Alone Race round Cape Horn to Bahia de Salvador in Brazil.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston announced that sports promotion company Fast Track had bought a substantial stake in his Clipper Ventures company and would run the next race in 2006. The race would be shorter by about two months and would exclude the smaller 40-foot class, leaving entries at 50 feet and 60 feet. "That means people like me would not be able to compete again," said the American Tim Kent, skipper of the 40-foot Everest Horizontal.

In the southern Atlantic, Ellen MacArthur was happy to be moving more quickly in Kingfisher2 and although still in touch with the record-breaking schedule set by Bruno Peyron in 1999, is well behind another Frenchman, Olivier de Kersuason, who set off in early January in Geronimo.