Barely two days after the start of the 2024 Vendée Globe, the Chinese Jingkun Xu and the French Maxime Sorel injured their ankles aboard their boat.
A hectic start to the race. If the departure of the 10e edition of the Vendée Globe was rather calm with the absence of wind in Les Sables d'Olonne (Vendée), the solo round-the-world sailing trip without stopover and without assistance took another turn with rougher seas, which caused damage to certain skippers. After barely 48 hours on board their boat, two of them injured their ankles.
Amputee of an arm, the Chinese Jingkun Xu, who is in the last places in the ranking, suffers from a sprain and can barely walk. “My condition is not perfect. I sprained my left foot today. It hurts like hell… I hope it's not a fracture. I don’t walk very well, I don’t dare put my left foot on the ground and put weight on it,” confided the sailor from the Middle Kingdom, who managed to find “a splint to stabilize” his foot.
Maxime Sorel also experienced his first struggles on the “Everest of the seas”. While sailing in “frankly chaotic” seas along the Spanish coast last night, the Frenchman injured his right ankle. “At the end of the night, when the wind rose again, I wanted to reduce my mainsail and I struggled quite a bit. I've tried a little bit of everything. (…) In the battle with the hook, I injured my right ankle. It is slightly swollen under the malleolus. I will monitor that too and send photos to the doctors if it swells,” said Maxime Sorel, somewhat distraught.
Because even if he is in the middle of the ranking, he has had a far from easy first two days. “This start of the race is not cool. I have the impression of having a series of problems and of having little success on the water,” he regretted. And this is a bit like the daily life of many skippers in the Vendée Globe.
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