After disappearing from the radar for 15 years, Philippe Jeantot, creator of the Vendée Globe, returned this Saturday morning to Les Sables d'Olonne. Tried between 2003 and 2008 for non-declaration of income taxes, tax fraud and bankruptcy, the sailor who now lives in Thailand now has a quay that bears his name on the port of Les Sables.
He disappeared in 2008, without a trace. He is now back in Les Sables d'Olonne, where a quay bears his name, in Port-Olona. Without him, the Vendée Globe would not exist. For this reason, the town of Les Sables d'Olonne has decided to pay tribute to the creator of this incredible sailing race around the world, non-stop and without assistance.
“It's obviously an emotion. It makes me very happy. I'm moved. I thank the mayor for having taken this initiative”, declared Philippe Jeantot at the microphone of RMC Sport, touched to find faces that seemed to him familiar on the occasion of this moving return to basics.
The former skipper had been very discreet in recent years. Philippe Jeantot had escaped the radar after his second conviction for tax fraud (his legal troubles began in 2003, with his indictment after the organizing company was placed in liquidation). He doesn't want to hear these stories anymore.
It's forgotten, and then… I have a short memory
Ouest-France ended up finding his trace in October 2016, in Thailand, where he started a new life five years ago.
“There was the desire to turn the page, and then to say now anyway I’m starting a new life,” he told us. “I was looking for a country where I could go with my boat and then live in easy and favorable conditions. When you want to live on a boat all year round, there are not many places in the world where you can go. I wanted to avoid places with cyclones, with tornadoes So here I am in Thailand and it's really a new life. I'm a very simple person, I don't have a complicated life. I'm not a high roller: the sea, diving, the boat, friends, I'm perfectly happy.”
Philippe Jeantot: “It’s very, very violent”
More than twenty years after his departure, Philippe Jeantot noticed a lot of changes, obviously, while wandering around the town of Sables-d'Olonne: “There are lots of places that I didn't recognize. The port, when I see all these boats, it’s certainly impressive, I’m very, very surprised.” The race itself has little in common with what it was in the early 1990s when it was created, having been imagined in a Sydney bar in 1986.
“From what I've heard, it's violent. It's very, very violent. With seats where the skippers are strapped in with helmets… In my time, we were far from that. We passed more time outside than inside. It's true that the first time we were heading into the unknown. The thirteen competitors who left were very experienced sailors. of the world alone or with a crew, on boats, at the time, revolutionary, but today which seem like relics Because the evolution that has taken place in 20 or 30 years is extraordinary. “We went from 250 to 500 miles a day.”
The sailors who have made the legend of the Vendée Globe in recent years and who will take the start of the 10th edition in a week, Philippe Jeantot recognizes without difficulty, he does not know them. “I know Jean Le Cam, and otherwise, I don't know any others. But I'm happy for them, because they are people who are going to live an extraordinary experience. I wish them to cross the finish line .”
“Some who attended the start of the first Vendée Globe told me afterwards. We leave, all the support boats are there. They follow us for 5 or 10 miles offshore. And at one point, they turn around . And that day, there was a freezing east wind, I was told afterwards that there was dead silence for several minutes. People were all saying, how many are going to come back? them, we were going to suicide. It had never been done. There are thirteen competitors at the start. Is there at least one who will come back?
