AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- A race between unbeaten American sailing syndicates Oracle and OneWorld was abandoned Tuesday at the America's Cup because of light wind.

	Italy's Mascalzone Latino, right, and Great Britain's GBR Challenge rush to pull down their spinnakers, but their race was abandoned because of light winds.

The race in the Hauraki Gulf was one of three called off, all involving U.S. yachts. Italy's Prada won the day's only race in the challenger series, beating Sweden's Victory Challenge by two minutes, 35 seconds. Prada finished only five minutes short of the cutoff for completing the last leg.

Oracle of San Francisco was leading One World of Seattle when the race was stopped. The yachts had failed to complete a 3-nautical-mile leg within a 45-minute limit.

The race featuring the New York Yacht Club's Stars & Stripes was stopped because of diminished wind. Dennis Conner's boat was leading France's Le Defi by more than two minutes along the Prada-Victory Challenge course.

Also called off was the race between Italy's Mascalzone Latino and Britain's GBR. The Italian boat was heading for the fifth mark when the 45-minute limit elapsed. Alinghi of Switzerland had a bye.

A race has to be stopped and sailed again if the leading yacht cannot complete a leg of the course within a 45-minute limit. No date has yet been set for the rerun of the abandoned races Tuesday.

Nine teams from six countries are competing in the four-month Louis Vuitton Cup for the right to challenge Team New Zealand for the America's Cup in February.

OneWorld and Alinghi both have four victories, but the Seattle entry has only three points, losing a point before the challenger series began because of a rules infraction.

Oracle and Victory have three points each, followed by Stars & Stripes and Prada with two points. GBR Challenge has one point and Le Defi and Mascalzone Latino have none.

Each victory is worth one point, with one team to be eliminated after two round-robins.

Prada, the defending challenger champion, finished only five minutes short of the cutoff for completing the last leg.

''I think the good thing about this race was that although the wind was very light, surprisingly the boats stayed very close throughout the race,'' Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis said.

The day began poorly for Prada, the defending challenger champion, when the syndicate announced its latest of two new generation race yachts, ITA-80, had been sent to an Auckland boatyard for hull modification.

The decision to carry out work on the new boat suggests the Italian syndicate is not happy with its performance.

ITA-80 will not be relaunched until November, and Prada will be first to sail the first two challenger round robins in its older yacht, ITA-74.

The move follows the public disagreement last week between syndicate head Patrizio Bertelli and Doug Peterson, the American-born designer of the Prada boats. Peterson was removed.

In other news, the first non-American yacht to retain the America's Cup, New Zealand's NZL-60, will be retired from Cup racing this week with an undefeated record.

The yacht's mainsail will eventually be hung on the wall of the main boat shed at Team New Zealand's Auckland base. The tradition is similar to retiring the number of a famous athlete.

NZL-60 met Prada in the America's Cup final in 2000 in Auckland. The sleek, black yacht, christened New Zealand, won five consecutive races in the best-of-nine series.