The Vendée Globe starts from Les Sables-d’Olonne on Sunday with three Swiss at the start. Justine Mettraux and Alan Roura are not part of the restricted circle of favorites, and a top-10 would already constitute a great success.
Forty sailors – 6 women and 34 men – are tackling this solo, non-stop round-the-world trip. Among them, three Swiss: Alan Roura, Justine Mettraux and Oliver Heer. If the last named, the first German Swiss to participate in the Vendée Globe, will above all try to complete the Everest of the seas, the other two can claim a good ranking… if they manage to avoid the pitfalls.
The two Genevans do not have a latest generation boat. Their respective monohulls – TeamWork and Hublot – have already been put to the test during the last Vendée Globe when they were skippered by other sailors, but do not necessarily have the latest technological advances.
“The knife between the teeth”
“The objective is to play in the right pack with the boats of my generation, or even the most recent”slips Roura, who hosted Keystone-ATS at the beginning of October in Lorient. “In fact, regardless of the ranking, the goal is really to get the best out of the man and the boat. And, of course, to have fun.”
At “only” 31 years old, Alan Roura is already participating in his third Vendée Globe and will try to do better than his 17th place during the last edition. “The 2020/21 Vendée was hard to accept. Now, I’m leaving with the knife between my teeth”says the one who had experienced numerous technical problems.
The differences with the best monohulls at the start should not be huge, but still enough to give the main favorites an advantage over the competition. In recent years, the Imoca hull, 18 meters long, has been further optimized and the number of foils has increased. These state-of-the-art boats can, however, be subject to breakdowns. To see if Alan Roura and Justine Mettraux will manage to take advantage of this to stay in the pack.
The premiere of Mettraux
“A top-10 would be satisfactory. But it’s hard to anticipate everything, even if we were able to prepare well”breathes the 38-year-old Genevan, who will participate in her first Vendée Globe. “There are new boats that we don’t know about, there is obviously a lot of competition, and there are obviously the imponderables”recalls Justine Mettraux, who spoke to Keystone-ATS in August.
The skipper, who was notably able to test her TeamWork during the last Transat Jacques Vabre in 2023 (6th in a duo with Frenchman Julien Villon), is preparing for all eventualities. “It’s difficult to plan for a Vendée, there are so many hazards. We know that not all sailors will finish the race, perhaps that will be the case for me. We must admit that abandonment can always happen. We’re leaving for two and a half months, not two weeks like we’re used to.”she blurted.
ats/bao
