Sailing-Swedish women dominate America's Cup group to book semi-final berth

BARCELONA, Spain : Sweden dominated their women's America's Cup group to make the semi-final on Tuesday, with the Dutch and Spanish teams also qualifying in testing conditions off Barcelona.

The Swedish team, who have been able to get more practice on board the AC40 foiling boats than some other crews, set the pace with a controlled performance in a shifty Mediterranean breeze.

At the end of the eight-race series, Sweden topped their group, which also included Australia, Canada and Germany, to make the six-boat semi-final scheduled for Friday.

Canada's hopes were dashed by a dramatic nose dive and near capsize in Tuesday's first race, damaging their high-tech boat and putting them out of the remainder of the event.

Their high-speed crash also had repercussions for the other side of the draw between Britain, France, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States, which had to be delayed.

Because the 12 teams in the event share boats, the damage to the AC40 being used by the Canadians meant that Britain would not have been able to race on Tuesday afternoon as scheduled.

As a result, the organisers rescheduled the group's fleet race to Thursday to give time for it to be repaired.

"In the interests of fairness to all competitors, this afternoon's racing is cancelled," the race committee said.