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Jon Amtrup reports from the Nokia Oops Cup's Stockholm City Race

The Russian-Swedish trimaran Stena Sovcomflot dominated this Sunday's Stockholm City Race in the Nokia Oops Cup. Swiss skipper Steve Ravussin and his Swedish navigator Roger Nilson left all the competitors in their wake in four of the five races.

"All the six boats in Nokia Oops Cup are pretty equal," said Roger Nilson. "The difference is rather the fact that we have been training far more than the other teams lately and have got a very strong team."

After finishing first in four races the Russian-Swedish team decided to not push to hard in the last. "We had already won the race, so we had the luxury of going easy on the boat in the last race," said Nilson. Stena Sovcomflot eventually finished third in that race.

The wind was gusty and at times hard just outside Stockholm this Sunday. The tris hit the lower end of 30 knots at times and the gusts tore up quite a few sails during the day. Nokia ripped one sail in the first regatta, while HiQ broke two battens in the main and had to do repairs rather that race the second heat. TietoEnator, the Finnish tri with Tomas Johanson at the helm, also had sail problems and only sailed two of the races.

Team Academy, last year’s winner of Nokia Oops Cup with Knut Frostad as skipper, is obviously back up to speed and secured second place in today’s races. The fight for third was hard between Nokia, HiQ and Roman Paszke on the former Bonduelle. But Magnus 'Mange' Olsson on Nokia finally beat the two other boats.  Bonduelle got fourth place, while HiQ and skipper Klas 'Klabbe' Nylöf ended up in fifth place. With only two out of five races sailed, TietoEnator had to settle with last place in Stockholm City Race.

The next event in Nokia Oops Cup will take place in Gothenburg on 6 June with a Speed Race and the first offshore race in the cup. The Union Race starts in Gothenburg and will finish in Oslo on 7 June.

Results Nokia Oops Cup, Stockholm City Race:
1. Stena Sovcomflot, Russia/Sweden
2. Academy, Norway
3. Nokia, Sweden
4 Bonduelle, Poland
5 HiQ, Sweden
6 TietoEnator, Finland.

Total in Nokia Oops Cup after 2 of 11 races:
1 Stena Sovcomflot 2 points
2 Academy 6 points
3 Nokia 6 ppoints
4 HiQ 7 points
5 Bonduelle 10 points
6 TietoEnator 11 points.