AN excruciating finale to the fourth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race saw Southampton's star sailors battling with impossibly light winds to achieve a podium place.

After 23 days of close racing heading towards Rio de Janeiro from Auckland, six hours separated the winner illbruck and runners-up djuice but three hours saw four boats cross the finish line, in one of the tightest finishes to the Southern Ocean leg in recent times.

Deferring to the high-calibre calls on illbruck, Team Tyco and Assa Abloy, the two boats crewed largely by local yachtsmen, achieved third and fifth positions, to keep them in contention for the overall title.

But the disappointment of fighting so hard through the Southern Ocean - which many round the world claimed was the worst experience of their careers - then suffering the stultifying effects of the Rio calm just as the tightly compacted fleet approached the finish line, was palpable.

"It's been a little bit tough. We're all a bit shell-shocked," said Hamble's Steve Hales, Tyco's navigator.

"Last night was really, really tough on everybody. It's a pretty tough way to decide a yacht race. But that's the way it goes.

"We've got another third. It's not what we really would have liked, but you've got to take your hat off to illbruck, they did a fantastic job.

"We thought we were worthy of second or third place. It hasn't moved us up the leaderboard but it has given us a few more points," said Hayles, who revealed he had lost sensation in his hands following the gruelling leg.

Neal McDonald from Hamble, who won the third leg as skipper on Assa Abloy and at one point held second place on the fourth, was clearly exhausted by the demands of racing 6,700nm through gales, storms, ice and then still waters.

"It has been pretty tough emotionally," he said. "The last few days have been the toughest part of the leg, seeing the places go and change by the hour.

"We have been in sight of most of the three boats around us for the last four days and we have had most of them on radar and we can see them going backwards and forwards as the wind has been shifting. It's been quite tricky."

McDonald's wife Lisa, skipper of Amer Sports Too arrived in Rio in the early hours yesterday morning, having failed to steal a march on Jez Fanstone's damaged yacht News Corp, which sailed the last few hundred miles with an emergency rudder having become the fourth Bruce Farr designed VOR 60 of the race to see their rudder break off mid-ocean.

With four-ninths of the points now allocated, the German boat (with 29 points) has a seven point lead over the rest of the fleet but with Assa on 20 points and Tyco on 18, the 2002 Volvo Race remains wide open with five legs, awarding equal winning points (8) each, still to go.