Louis Vuitton Act 12 - Day 4 - Flight 7: Victory Challenge got wings and beat Alinghi, Desafío Español sail away problem-ridden ML - Capitalia

Thankfully, we were wrong in our morning preview and the first flight of the Sunday races not only wasn´t dull and predictable, but on the contrary Magnus Holmberg at the helm of Victory Challenge fought a very tough match against Alinghi and beat them. Apparently, the new sponsorship from Red Bull gave SWE-63 wings.

The Spanish Desafío Español did not have any problems beating Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team after the Italians suffered from yet another spinnaker problem. In the rest of the races, Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand easily beat Areva Challenge and United Internet Team Germany, while BMW Oracle proved once again their absolute superiority over the "smaller" teams. Despite receiving a penalty in prestart against +39 Challenge, the Americans increased their lead in every leg, even after offloading the penalty in the second upwind leg. Finally, Team Shosholoza scored another point after Team China abandoned the race due to a problem with the mainsail halyard.

Victory Challenge - Alinghi : 1 - 0

The prestart procedure seemed initially to favor the Swedes but they got trapped by Alinghi who powered ahead. Their lead did not last long and in the first leg of the race both boats were neck and neck till the top mark. Victory Challenge with an excellent move squeezed in and rounded 16 seconds ahead of Alinghi. The excitement continued into the second leg till the leeward gate where it was Alinghi´s turn to squeeze in but Victory still rounded first but just 6 seconds ahead.

The second upwind leg was a copy of the first one, with both boats close to each other till the weather mark. The two Holmbergs at the helm of the two boats got into a classic luffing situation but Magnus Holmberg outmaneuvered Peter Holmberg and it was once again Victory Challenge's turn to squeeze in and round 6 seconds ahead.

The final downwind leg was even worse for the Defender of the 32nd America's Cup as the Swedish team found a puff of wind at the right side of the course, increasing their lead by 15 seconds and crossing the finish line 21 seconds ahead.

Mascalzone Latino Capitalia Team - Desafío Español : 0 - 1

What was supposed to be the race of the day turned out into a one way victory for the Spanish America´s Cup challenger. After a quite tame and nervouse pre-start, the Spanish boat, ESP-88, picked up great speed early on, increasing the lead over the Italians and crossed the top mark 28 seconds ahead of Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team. At that point disaster stroke at the Italian boat. An absolutely horrible spinnaker drop made the Italians throw it away and hoist a second one, and lose more than a minute. From that point on, it was impossible for the Italians to catch up with their opponents and the Spanish sailed away to a very important victory.

Desafío Español will be obviously happy with that important victory but also with the fact that their brand new boat ESP-88 seemed to be performing very well upwind and downwind in today's stronger conditions, exactly as it did during the pre-race tests a few weeks ago.