Russell Coutts, the all-time America’s Cup-winning skipper from New Zealand, doesn’t race the Swedish Match Tour on a regular basis, but he’s a force to be reckoned with when he shows up.

Coutts won his second Tour event of the year when he claimed the Swedish Match Cup championship with a 3-1 victory over Australian Peter Gilmour and the Pizza-La Sailing Team.

It was Coutts’ second victory at the Swedish Match Cup (having previously won in 2001), and his fourth in eight events on the Tour over the past five years. Two months ago Coutts won the Tour championship in Porto Azzurro, Italy, where he also defeated Gilmour and the Pizza-La crew, 2-1.

Coutts, sailing with Tour regular Jes Gram-Hansen of Denmark and his countrymen Michael Arnhild, Christian Kamp and Rasmus Kostner, split the first two races of the final against the Pizza-La team, and then won two straight to claim the championship.

In the Petit Final Magnus Holmberg defeated Chris Law, 2-0, to finish third while Law placed fourth in his defense of the title. Holmberg won the first match outright, then used a penalty against Law to win the second match, which was not without drama.

Law became the second skipper to fall overboard at the Swedish Match Cup when he went for a swim after entering the pre-start box (earlier in the week Coutts hit Peter Holmberg so hard that Holmberg wound overboard).

While Holmberg won’t compete at the first Tour event of the 2004-’05 season, the Portugal Match Cup in Cascais (July 26-30), Coutts will. And he’ll have the Danes crewing for him again.

FINAL PAIRING (First to 3 points)

Flight 1 : Russell Coutts (NZL) def. Peter Gilmour (AUS)
Flight 2 : Peter Gilmour def. Russell Coutts
Flight 3 : Russell Coutts def. Peter Gilmour
Flight 4 : Russell Coutts def. Peter Gilmour

PETIT FINAL RESULTS (First to 2 points)

Flight 1 : Magnus Holmberg (SWE) def. Chris Law (GBR)
Flight 2 : Magnus Holmberg def. Chris Law