Action replay

Tension mounts for Cup's biggest culling as Louis Vuitton Cup challengers continue form from yesterday

Orm SWE-73 beat Le Défi FRA-69
Delta: 01:12 Victory Challenge leads 3:0

The Swedish march towards the repechage continues despite a change of helm on Orm, with Magnus Holmberg stepping behind the wheel and helping to provide another polished performance for Victory Challenge. On board conversations as the boats entered the pre-start, indicated that the Le Défi afterguard wanted the right side of the start and the Swedes the left.

After some early aggressive moves by Le Défi, the boats approached the line early, resulting in a split tack start with the French boat taking the right and Orm the pin end. Orm tacked onto port at the pin end, crossing the line with good speed and the first shift proved to be a left-hander that helped the Swedes into an early lead. Fractionally better boat speed on the Victory Challenge yacht soon allowed Orm to get into its stride and consolidate a lead.

Two minutes into the race, Le Défi gave up the right hand side of the course and tacked to cross behind Orm and allowed the Swedes to gain further from the next right hand shift. Orm rounded the first windward mark 45-seconds ahead and then inexorably extended to win by another comfortable margin.

After the racing Le Defi's helmsman Philippe Presti gave his views on if there was anything they could do to claw their way back: "Between the second round robin and the quarter final we decided to make some modifications on the boat and to have a different keel and trimmer. We are looking to have better tuning of this trimmer and I think our speed was improving today. Unfortunately we didn’t have a very good start and we missed a couple of shifts. At the end it was a one minute difference but I think the race today was completely different from yesterday’s or the day before’s. We hope to have a tough race tomorrow and try to beat the Swedes."