3.30pm
Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes team slipped to seventh place in the America's Cup challenger series after losing an important mid-table clash with Sweden's Victory Challenge on the Hauraki Gulf today.
In 16-19 knot winds, the Swedes led at every mark of the shortened four-leg race, but had a heart-stopping moment
about six minutes from the end when they had spinnaker trouble. They managed to fix the problem before Stars & Stripes could overtake them.
Victory Challenge, aboard Orm (SWE-73), which they switched to for the second round robin of the Louis Vuitton Cup, after using Orn (SWE-63) in the first round, won by 13 seconds.
They had pulled away from Stars & Stripes on each of the upwind legs, but the Americans came back at them downwind, cutting the Swedes' lead by 7sec on the first downwind leg.
Victory now have two wins from two outings in the second round, while Stars & Stripes have lost all three races so far in round robin two.
Their other losses have been to GBR and Prada, both teams they would have wanted to beat to give them any chance of getting into the top four quarter final group for the next stage of the challenger series.
After the current round, one of the nine teams will drop out, while the others will be separated into top four and bottom four groups, with the former having an advantage in the contest to find who will challenge Team New Zealand for the America's Cup in February.
Winds: 16-19k
Winning margin: 00.13
nzherald.co.nz/americascup
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