The race for fourth and fifth turned into an excruciating, slow-motion match race in the early hours of Friday morning, with Telefónica holding off arch-rivals CAMPER for a five-point bump that may yet prove crucial.
Team Telefónica, winners of the first three offshore legs, find themselves in second place overall after Groupama's Leg 7 finish on the shoulders of Abu Dhabi proved enough to take the French team three points clear at the top.
The consolation for skipper Iker Martínez was in squeezing past CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand in a heroic struggle with an adverse current, exacerbated by a lack of breeze, on the River Tagus.
"It was a leg with a lot of problems and a lot of difficult situations with the weather," Martínez said. "We didn’t have much wind for the last couple of hours and we knew the other guys were very close so we tried to catch them.
"We are happy to finish fourth instead of fifth and we are happy that Groupama didn’t win. It is not as good as it was and obviously it could be worse."
There were times when both teams were actually going backwards, others when they headed away from the line to the coast, and then back again to produce tracks that looked like snails' trails.
The race was impossible to call in the pitch black night, with Telefónica finally crossing the line at 02:28 local time, one minute 42 seconds ahead of CAMPER.
"That was massively frustrating at the end," said CAMPER skipper Chris Nicholson. "We led coming into the river by four or five miles then ran into a hole – couldn’t help that.
"Then we had a bit of back and forth and we built up a one-mile lead up to the finish and just ran into a calm patch. There’s not one single thing in all of that which we have to be regretful for.We sailed a good leg to the finish and sometimes this happens.
"We’re a good team, we will bounce back. While there’s a remotest chance of winning we’ll be there."
The result kept Telefónica within striking distance of the new leaders and left CAMPER 21 points off the pace, although still well in with a chance of victory with two legs and three in-port races still to sail.
With PUMA Ocean Racing powered by BERG in third place overall, 12 points behind the leaders, four teams are still in contention, making this the closest contest in the history of the Volvo Ocean Race
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