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Dongfeng's win in the Volvo Ocean Race came down to a "calculated gamble" but one that paid huge dividends for the Chinese boat and a couple of Kiwis on board.
Daryl Wislang won his second Volvo Ocean Race title in four attempts. Photo: Volvo Ocean Race.
Daryl Wislang won consecutive titles, following on from his success with Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing last time around in 2014-15, and Stu Bannatyne became the most successful Volvo Ocean Race sailor of all time with a fourth crown. There were also Kiwis among the shore-based team.
But their victory was only confirmed in the final minutes after Dongfeng crossed in front of their two main rivals and the closeness after nine months of racing was hard to comprehend. Some mathematics boffins even tried to quantify that, working out that a difference of one mile over a 45,000-mile race equated to just over 1000th of a millimetre in a 100m running race or the equivalent of the length of a typical unit of bacteria.
That's part of what made Dongfeng's decision to break from both Mapfre and Team Brunel and take the coastal route around the exclusion zones on the run into The Hague all the more remarkable.
"We'd done a fair bit of research down that area," Wislang told stuff.co.nz. "There's a lot of shallow stuff and you had to be careful. A few guys had written it off. But the situation we were in, we felt it was best. We were leeward of Mapfre and decided to go for it. There was no going back, the cards had been dealt. We were very nervous."
So were most people watching, given the stakes.
Dongfeng, Mapfre and Brunel were effectively tied on points going into the final leg meaning the first of the trio into The Hague would take the title. Dongfeng found the best time to win their first leg of the race, blocking the chances of both Blair Tuke and Peter Burling to become the first person to win sailing's triple crown (Olympic gold, America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race).
"Amazing, it was so close and came down to the wire," Wislang said.
"I think our victory shows the closeness of one-design racing. For us it was about keeping it close and not having any bad results, staying close to the front and then pulling it out on this last leg."
Wislang and Bannatyne were just two of nine Zealanders who sailed in the epic race on top of the multitude of people involved behind the scenes.
Stay tuned for more coverage from Yachting New Zealand.
Volvo Ocean Race final standings (NZers):
Dongfeng Race Team - 73 points (Daryl Wislang, Stu Bannatyne)
Mapfre - 70 pts (Blair Tuke, Louis Sinclair)
Team Brunel - 69 pts (Peter Burling)
Team AkzoNobel - 59 pts (Brad Farrand, Justin Ferris)
Vestas 11th Hour Racing - 39 pts (Tony Mutter)
Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag - 32 pts
Turn the Tide on Plastic - 32 pts (Bianca Cook)
