NEWS. Volvo Ocean Race Weekly recap 1

Welcome to Alicante and to the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race. Over the next 9 months 7 teams will sail nearly 40,000 miles around the world. And with the start under a week away the race village in Alicante was opened by the mayor Sonia Castedo and Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad. For this edition of the race Volvo has created identical one design Volvo Ocean 65s – the result is in the hands of the sailors. Thousands of spectators crowded the race village for the first serious action. The crews were ready to race and on the all-women Team SCA there was a special guest – H.R.H. Prince Carl Philip of Sweden.The fleet hit the start line at 2pm Spanish time on an eight mile course in 14 knots of breeze and the Chinese Dong Feng [dong fung] made a bold move to the right side of the course. It brought them to the first gate neck and neck with Team Vestas Wind. Mapfre started poorly with a technical problembut sailed up the leaderboard and finally managed to make the podium. But the battle to win was between Abu Dhabi and Alvimedica who were locked together for half the race with the young American team just managing to hold off the experienced Abu Dhabi team to take the first victory of the Volvo Ocean Race 2014/2015. H.R.H. Prince Carl Philip presented the Trophy, the crew celebrated and now the seven crews have just a few days to prepare for Leg 1 to Cape Town – 6,000 miles and around three weeks at sea.

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