Volvo Ocean Race: Breathless to Gothenburg: Stage thriller before the finale

Bouwe Bekking's "Golden Boys" overtook Charles Caudrelier's Dongfeng Race Team overnight and fought their way to the front runners on "Mapfre". At around 9 o'clock on Thursday morning, the red boat in the lead and the yellow boat behind it were separated by only around 200 metres on their way to the finish harbour in Gothenburg. Behind them, Simeon Tienpont's fast team AkzoNobel had also fought its way past Dongfeng. With the second slowest speed in the fleet, Dongfeng was even threatened by Dee Caffari's advancing Team Turn the Tide on Plastic.

At the front, Mapfre and Team Brunel are ensuring that the duel comes to a head with record speeds. With just under 290 nautical miles remaining to the finish, the leg is expected to come to an end this evening. The experts expect theArrival of the leading boats between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.. But it could also be a little earlierShowdown come.

As a reminder, here are the interim results of the overall classification, according to which three teams are still fighting for the overall victory in the 13th edition of the Volvo Ocean Race: Dongfeng (60 points) led after nine of eleven legs ahead of Mapfre (59 points) and Team Brunel (57 points). There are two things to bear in mind when calculating possible stage results: A stage win is honoured with a bonus point. And at the end of the regatta around the world, the team with the fastest overall time will receive another bonus point. In all likelihood, this will be Dongfeng, because their lead of almost a day on the final stages will be almost impossible to catch up with Brunel.

For those who can't watch the exciting stage finale today and need a little distraction: Click here for the points calculator where you can use the expected or hoped-for stage results of your favourite team to calculate the new intermediate result before the eleventh and final stage. And here you can go to the Live tracker and the interim results.