Volvo Ocean Race: Abu Dhabi King of the Oceans. Ninth stage to Team Alvimedica

Team Alvimedica wins the ninth and final leg of the Volvo Ocean Race and Abu Dhabi mathematically takes home the overall victory in the 2014/2015 crewed round-the-world race.

Alberto Bolzan was at the helm of Alvimedica as the boat’s bow cut across the finish line of the last leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, which took the crews from Lorient to Gothenburg, after 4 days 9 hours and 53 seconds sailing. We have to go back 17 years to find an Italian winner of the final leg of the crewed round-the-world race: the last time was Paolo Bassani in 1988 aboard the Merit Cup, with New Zealand skipper Grant Dalton, when he won the final leg of the crewed round-the-world sailing race from La Rochelle to Southampton.
Victory was played out in a last-ditch finish, with a very light wind that tested the nervous endurance of the sailors, who were forced to struggle with the vagaries of the Gothenburg Fjord. With fifth place in this leg, Abu Dhabi, skipper Ian Walker, is mathematically the overall winner of the 2014/2015 Volvo Ocean Race, a ranking that has the Dutch of Team Brunel in second place.