‘Underdogs’ Team Malizia look to make move in ‘anything can happen’ Leg 6 of The Ocean Race

Co-skipper Will Harris believes Team Malizia can thrive as underdogs heading into Leg 6 of The Ocean Race, which will have “absolutely everything”.

After five legs of the race Team Malizia are third in the overall standings, four points behind leaders 11th Hour Racing.

The sixth and penultimate leg of the race is an 800-nautical mile sprint from Aarhus, Denmark to The Hague in the Netherlands.

“And how the whole race has gone and I think that’s a good situation for us to be in because I feel like we have less pressure going into this. We’re the ones who are slightly the underdogs.

“We want to beat them, we’re a bit of a younger team with fewer laps around the planet than the others, so it’s cool to be fighting with them really.”

As it was a double-points scoring leg, the result saw 11th Hour Racing Team move to the top of the overall leaderboard for the first time.

But there’s still plenty to play for ahead of Leg 6, which starts on June 8.

“I think the last two legs it’s clear that we’ve been in the fight for more points,” added Harris.

“Finishing four minutes behind Holcim-PRB in second place in Leg 5 and 26 minutes behind 11th Hour Racing Team in Leg 4, we’ve been in the fight but we haven’t got the score to show for it.

“Four points is still achievable, especially having five boats back in it so nothing’s out of the question, anything can happen. And just because it’s a shorter leg doesn’t mean that it changes much.

“There’s absolutely everything in this leg, exclusion zones are going to always keep it really complicated in the North Sea, the Baltic is going to be light winds and it will be anyone’s game and that can really mix things up, so it gives us a chance to catch the guys in front.

“But Biotherm are still seven points behind, anything can happen with them as well. It’s exciting to see the race still like this at this point after so many miles. Hopefully 11th Hour Racing and Holcim-PRB will battle it out and forget about us a bit.

“If I think back to Alicante, we’d done six months sailing on the boat and we hadn’t really found the mode yet for the boat in these marginal lighter wind conditions. We had just replaced a set of foils as well, which we hadn’t initially planned for the boat. I think to where we are now and how much we’ve learnt about the boat and how much experience we have gained, it has just been phenomenal really.”

– – –