With roughly 400 nautical miles left to Lorient, the Ocean Race Atlantic's front four, DMG Mori, United by the Ocean, 11th Hour Racing and Malizia, have broken clear into their own private battle after picking up a new front of strong wind on the north side of a high-pressure system that had briefly threatened to stall the whole fleet. Embrace the Challenge and MSIG Europe, both well back on distance, are now racing each other for fifth and sixth rather than the podium, the gap has grown too wide to close in the miles remaining.
DMG Mori holds the lead, built on a tactical call to cut inside the high pressure a few days ago that's now paying off. Skipper Kojiro Shiraishi kept his message simple: "I will do my best for the last two days to train and go fast. I want to race the boat as fast as I can and reach my goal as soon as possible." Navigator Nico Lunven, with the boat 320nm from the finish at the time, wasn't calling it either way: "We still don't know who will be in first position. It's really not finished."
United by the Ocean has slotted into the most southerly line among the front four, a position DMG Mori held for days, hunting better breeze. Malizia, further north, has fewer options left to play and still can't perfectly tune its repaired foil, a bet on a slower-moving high-pressure system that didn't quite pay off the way the crew hoped. All four boats are within close range of each other on the water, and with the breeze compressing the fleet as boats close on the coast, nobody's willing to call the finish yet.
Ocean Race Atlantic: Distance to Finish
Tracker snapshots, Day 1 to Day 3
Source: The Ocean Race Atlantic live tracker
Malizia's Super Sprint series, wrapped up in style
Malizia went into the fleet's final Super Sprint already mathematically uncatchable in the cumulative series, sitting on 35 points with nobody else able to reach that total. They won the last one anyway, extending the margin for the sake of it. DMG Mori finishes the series second, and Embrace the Challenge, despite running well off the overall race lead, takes third overall in the sprint series, a result skipper Oliver Heer can point to on an older-generation boat that's been competitive in short, sharp bursts all race even while losing ground on distance.
Team Malizia's new boat is fitted with a steering wheel on each side of the cockpit, a generational difference from the older Malizia hull, which is now the boat Francesca Clapcich races as 11th Hour Racing.
What's left to Lorient
DMG Mori's own routing puts them roughly 24 hours from the finish at the time of the broadcast, with Embrace the Challenge, and MSIG Europe close behind it, arriving as much as 42 hours after that, a gap of well over a day now separating the front of the fleet from the back. The Bay of Biscay is still forecast to turn light and fluky right near the finish, a genuine tactical trap after more than a week of pure speed sailing. Aside from a single tack on day two, this leg has been almost entirely about trim, sail choice and boat speed, but the navigators on the front four boats will need sharp final calls to get through the coastal breeze cleanly.
Aotearoa Ocean Racing: a training leg, not a title tilt
Conrad Colman's crew aboard MSIG Europe, sixth on the water, aren't pretending otherwise. Asked what they're actually racing against at this point, given the front of the fleet is long gone, Anna Merchant's answer was honest: "We're not really racing against much of the other fleet at this point because they're a lot faster than us. At the moment we're just trying to make sure we sail as fast as we can to stay in the system, because if we fall off the back of it, it's going to be a slow finish for us."
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Colman is a genuinely capable offshore sailor, and this young Kiwi crew has handled real breakdowns, real fatigue and a genuine technology gap with good humour all week, birds following the boat, a running joke about the dwindling snack bin, spirits kept high through grey, difficult days. But MSIG Europe is the only boat in this fleet without foils, racing a design roughly 20 years older than most of what it's lined up against, and the results reflect exactly that gap rather than any lack of skill or effort on board. This leg was always framed by the team itself as building the core of a crew for a future round-the-world campaign, not a serious tilt at winning this one, and on that measure it's done its job. The crew is ready. The boat isn't.
Standings, Day 8
DMG Mori – 213.8nm to finish
11th Hour Racing – 223.6nm (9.8nm behind)
United by the Ocean – 226.6nm (12.8nm behind)
Malizia – 244.2nm (30.4nm behind)
Embrace the Challenge – 489.1nm (275.2nm behind)
MSIG Europe – 634.5nm (420.7nm behind)
