After four sailing victories today Magnus Holmberg is on his way to a spot in the quarter finals in Match Cup Sweden. In hot summer sun and weak winds, twelve of the world’s best Match racing sailors in the world sailed seven matches the second day of the world championship race in Match racing. Holmberg is only one point after leading Jes Gram-Hansen, Denmark, 7 points, but is hunted by a whole flock of international star sailors.

“We are really happy if we succeed to go to quarter finals”, Magnus Holmberg said.

For Frenchman Mathieu Richard it was the first race day and he convinced from start with five victories but lost to Magnus Holmberg and Brit Ben Ainslie.

“We had a great feeling today, good speed and tactics; I am happy”, said Richard.

With five victories he is on the same point as Mattias Rahm and six time winner Peter Gilmour, who had to struggle for his points today. Gilmour succeeded to win the battle against America’s Cup colleague Magnus Holmberg in the last match. But Magnus thought Gilmour got his victory a bit cheap.

“I thought he blocked me at the leeward mark and should have gotten a penalty”, said Magnus who was satisfied with his teams sailing under the tricky wind conditions. But we have to improve our starts tomorrow.”

But his six points will probably be enough for reaching the quarter finals in Match Cup Sweden. Last year’s winner in Match Cup Sweden, Björn Hansen, had a tough day and started with a loss against young Australian Torvar Mirsky. After the day he had improved his results to 2-2 and totally four points.

“In this bunch you can’t win all races, but we have great speed in the boat, especially downwind and feel pretty good. But it’s tricky, with super hard wind conditions”, said Björn Hansen.

But the strongest sailor of the day was Danish Jes Gram-Hansen who left the day with a 5-2 victory result and leads Round Robin in match Cup Sweden

Results Open Class, Match Cup Sweden 2 July 2008

Jes Gram-Hansen 5-2, Tot. 7 points

Magnus Holmberg 4-3, 6 p

Mattias Rahm 3-4, 5 p

Mathieu Richard 5-2, 5 p

Peter Gilmour, 3-2, 5 p

Björn Hansen 2-2, 4 p

Torvar Mirsky 2-3, 4 p

Sébastien Col, 5 p, 4 p

Ian Williams 3-4, 3 p

Ben Ainslie 2-5, 3 p

Paolo Cian 0-4, 0 p