Spain’s former Olympic champion Iker Martinez made a crucial error to turn his Volvo Ocean Race-leading Telefonica boat way off course in Saturday’s in-port race to slide from first to last and gift victory to French team Groupama, their closest overall challengers.
World sailor of the year Martinez, who won gold in the Athens Games and silver in Beijing, chose to round the wrong turning buoy and his crew sailed several hundred metres off course before correcting their error.
“We had sailed a nearly perfect race until then,” said Martinez, who will launch a bid for his third Olympic medal running in the London Olympics.
“We were leading and that is enough. After we rounded the windward mark it was very confusing. There were two marks and I chose the wrong one. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever made a mistake like that so I feel terrible for the shore crew who had worked so hard.”
The result closes Telefonica’s lead at the top to just 16 points over Groupama who celebrated their first in-port race victory at the sixth attempt in this edition.
U.S. boat Puma, which won the treacherous Leg 5 from Auckland to Itajai in southern Brazil through the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, bounced back from a timing penalty to take third behind Camper (Spain/New Zealand).
The fleet next sails to Miami on Sunday in the sixth stage of the 39,000-nautical mile, eight-month race which is scheduled to finish in July in Galway, Ireland.
Overall standings: 1 Team Telefonica (Spain) 149 points, 2 Groupama (France) 133, 3 Camper (NZ/Spain) 124, 4 Puma (U.S.) 117, 5 Abu Dhabi 58, 6 Team Sanya (China) 25.
