Charlie Enright's Vestas 11th Hour Racing team has won the penultimate harbour race in the Volvo Ocean Race. The Danish-American crew beat the Dutch team AkzoNobel and the Spanish team Mapfre off Gothenburg. The third-placed Spaniards also won the special classification of all harbour races early and won the Inshore Trophy. For the overall standings, however, the result of the harbour races is only important as a "tiebreaker" if several teams are tied on points at the end of the race around the world.
Xabí Fernandez's Mapfre team created an exciting scene right at the start on Sunday at 2 pm local time, as the Spaniards had only one task on their way to winning the classification of all harbour races early: to reach the finish line ahead of Dongfeng. So the Spaniards and their helmsman Pablo Arrarte took on the rival Dongfeng Race Team by every trick in the book, taking close cover and slowing them down. The Dongfeng Race Team was unable to find a way around this and, after losing the infight in the hour-long race, was unable to finish higher than last place. The Spaniards can now no longer be displaced from first place in the overall harbour race standings ahead of the final harbour race in The Hague on 30 June.
Bouwe Bekking's Team Brunel, on the other hand, were unfortunate on their skipper's 55th birthday of all days after their many recent successes. After a successful start, Brunel had led the race dominantly until the halfway point, and the ideal birthday present for Bekking already seemed within reach. But then the "yellows" dropped back to sixth place on the third leg of the course due to a handling error when changing sails.
The harbour race was just the prelude to the upcoming showdown in the Volvo Ocean Race: the final leg of the ocean marathon will take the fleet of seven boats over 700 nautical miles from Gothenburg to the finish port of The Hague on 21 June. With Brunel, Mapfre and Dongfeng, three teams can still win the 13th edition. Never before in its 45-year history has the race come to such an exciting end.
Hundreds of thousands of fans are expected to cross the finish line in The Hague, hoping for Brunel's victory. Record participant Bouwe Bekking has never won the race of his life, but now has the best chance to do so in his eighth participation. He could follow in the footsteps of Cornelis Van Rietschoten with a triumph. The "Flying Dutchman" and Dutch national hero, who died in 2013 at the age of 87, was the only person to win the race twice in 1977/78 and 1981/82 with his fast "Flyer" yachts, thereby establishing a passion for the sea marathon among his compatriots that continues to this day.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
