Swedish Match Cup at Marstrand, Sweden overall

COUTTS CLAIMS SECOND SWEDISH MATCH CUP

Sailing with a Danish crew, the New Zealander trips up the Pizza-La Sailing Team

Russell Coutts, the all-time America’s Cup-winning skipper from New Zealand, doesn’t race the Swedish Match Tour on a regular basis, but he’s a force to be reckoned with when he shows up.

Coutts won his second Tour event of the year when he claimed the Swedish Match Cup championship with a 3-1 victory over Australian Peter Gilmour and the Pizza-La Sailing Team.

It was Coutts’ second victory at the Swedish Match Cup (having previously won in 2001), and his fourth in eight events on the Tour over the past five years.

“It’s always hard to win a championship,” Coutts said afterward. “I didn’t start well early in the week, but did today. I think we sailed well.”

Two months ago Coutts won the Tour championship in Porto Azzurro, Italy, where he also defeated Gilmour and the Pizza-La crew, 2-1.

Coutts, sailing with Tour regular Jes Gram-Hansen of Denmark and his countrymen Michael Arnhild, Christian Kamp and Rasmus Kostner, split the first two races of the final against the Pizza-La team, and then won two straight to claim the championship.

“These guys sail together a lot,” Coutts said of the Danes. “It was a matter of getting them used to my Kiwi terminology.”

Gilmour gave credit to Coutts for pulling together a crew that he never sailed with before and winning.

“Russell sailed superbly well,” said Gilmour. “To come here with a new crew and win is outstanding.”

Gilmour and his Pizza-La crew including Rod Dawson, Mike Mottl, Kazuhiko Sofuku and Yasuhiro Yaji clinched the 2003-’04 Tour championship a month ago after the Tour stop in Croatia.

Today, they added to their record setting performance. Their second place finish gives them all firsts and seconds on the championship leaderboard. And their 150 net points is also a record.

“I’m a little disappointed,” said Gilmour. “The boys sailed real well all year. I can’t fault their work at all.”

In the Petit Final Magnus Holmberg defeated Chris Law, 2-0, to finish third while Law placed fourth in his defense of the title.

Holmberg won the first match outright, then used a penalty against Law to win the second match, which was not without drama.

Law became the second skipper to fall overboard at the Swedish Match Cup when he went for a swim after entering the pre-start box.

“I pushed the tiller down hard in the dial up then pulled it back and the tiller extension broke off,” said Law. “I grabbed the toe rail as I fell backward, but couldn’t stop myself from going over. When I came up the crew was saying, ‘Swim, Chris, swim.’ But I was laughing so hard.”

For more comprehensive report on the final, information on the Swedish Match Tour including flight results, skippers biographies and event summaries, please visit www.SwedishMatchTour.com