Southampton sailor Adrian Stead has won the 800 nautical mile Nord Stream race with Team Great Britain.

Stead, one of the nation’s most accomplished sailors, was triumphant in the gruelling race across the Baltic from Flensburg in Germany to St Petersburg in Russia.

The Bursledon-based sailor has competed in two Olympic Games in 1992 and 1996, sailed around the globe, raced in the America’s Cup and has won the Rolex Fastnet Race in 2009 and 2011 to go with countless world championship wins.

In such a mammoth race, helmsman Stead and his Team GB made up of experienced navigator Jules Salter and a number of up and coming home-grown youth sailors, only just scraped home 26 seconds ahead of last year’s winners, Team Russia.

“The last spell was match racing in the pitch black – the Russians were just behind and it was a tug-of-war until the end,” said Stead.

“We had a great team together and I’m very pleased we managed to pull in all the people we did.

“The youngsters were brilliant, so committed and talented; huge plaudits go to them.

“The conditions were varying and that made the challenge even harder, we had to put in 110 per cent at all times, we were all up on deck for the last 16 hours of the race, hiking it out and making sure every boat length worked.

“The whole race was very close, the fleet stuck together the whole way. Earlier on we managed to get quite a good lead but then Russia and Germany sailed up to us again; we were trying so hard.”

Team GB held first place for the last 100 nautical miles on their Swan 60 ‘Tsaar Peter’ before eventually winning.