Let’s leave them alone. Let’s give them the runaround. Let them go, finally. 35 years ago, faced with the unknown of the adventure, the uncertainty of the challenge, the fear of not seeing them again, we secretly felt the desire to hold them back.
Nine editions later, it must be recognized that these distressing feelings, although fortunately they have not disappeared, have faded. 115 sailors have already started the Vendée Globe at least once, and 84 of them have completed it at least once.
This is much less than the number of climbers who have climbed Everest (600). But that doesn’t say anything very eloquent about the difficulty of the two adventures.
There will be 40 of them, including fifteen newbies, to cast off this morning from the pontoons of Port-Olona, in Les Sables d’Olonne. Will they experience the same apprehension, the same excitement, the same anguish perhaps, or the same excitement as the 13 pioneers who, on November 26, 1989, descended the Sables-d’Olonne channel to set out to conquer? of the globe? In their heart of hearts, surely.
Will they let the same long-awaited emotion shine through, and now scripted
with great fanfare in order to make it an iconic moment
(says the organizer), suitable for satisfying our voyeuristic instincts? Probably. Even if many, now formatted as very high-level champions, have learned to contain it, control it, and tame it so that it does not eat into them too much, when it is time to move into competition mode.
A marked and fenced path
In 10 editions, nothing has ultimately changed, even if everything has obviously changed. The Vendée Globe remains a tour of the earth via the Arctic Ocean, to be sailed alone on a boat, the maximum length of which…
