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Puma surge ahead at Volvo

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PUMA team (File)
PUMA team (File)

Alicante - The first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race turned on its head on Sunday, with Groupama slipping from first to last as their three racing rivals surged south at breakneck speed.

Groupama are the first French team to enter the race in 18 years and, having chosen the ACDC rock anthem "Highway to Hell" as their theme tune, they launched a huge gamble at the start of leg one from Alicante to Cape Town.

While two of the six teams were forced out of the 7 500 mile leg because of boat damage and three others followed the traditional route to the west, Groupama built a lead of 350 miles as they hopped down the African coast.

Puma, Telefonica and Camper finally got the wind they had been searching for on Friday night and by Sunday morning, still with over 5 000 miles to go, they had overhauled and dropped Groupama.

Puma, skippered by the American Ken Read, are the new leaders, with Spain's Telefonica just behind them.

Camper, the Spanish-New Zealand entry, were around 100 miles behind the two leaders and just ahead of Groupama.

"This is the reward for beating our brains out for almost a week," said Read after the team passed 20 knots of boat speed.

The problem for the French team, skippered by Franck Cammas, is that they now face having to go through the windless zone of the Doldrums at a much wider point than the others. That could mean heavier losses to come.

"The outcome won't be very positive, that's for sure." Cammas said. "That's the risk of our option. We knew it would be favourable in the short term but it was uncertain in the long term and it didn't come out very well for us."

At the moment, all four teams are converging on Fernando de Noronha, the archipelago off the Brazilian coast that they must round before they start the sprint to Cape Town.

That will open up the quickest part of the course and the next week should see the teams launch attacks on the monohull 24-hour distance record, set at 596.6 nautical miles by Ericsson 4 on their way to winning the last race in 2008-09.

Abu Dhabi and Sanya, the teams forced to retire from the leg, are shipping their boats to Cape Town to be ready for the second in-port race on December 10 and the start of leg two to Abu Dhabi the following day.

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