With the arrival, at 1.27 am on Friday, of the third-placed Sébastien Simon, the podium in the Vendée Globe 2024-2025 is complete, with Charlie Dalin having won on Tuesday just under a day ahead of Yoann Richomme. This is an opportunity for Tip & Shaft, present in Les Sables d’Olonne, to draw some initial conclusions from a record race (64 days 19 hours 22 minutes) in the company of a number of experts we met there.
First over the line four years ago, but beaten by Yannick Bestaven, Charlie Dalin has therefore managed to take the honours of the line and victory, the goal he and his team had set themselves when they set off on this cycle. Hence the palpable emotion at the moment of lifting the trophy on the village stage and the right to let loose some ten hours later on the dance floor. “It’s the first time I’ve had the impression that he’s let himself go a bit, even though he’s a modest person who keeps everything to himself,” noted Maxime Sorel at the end of a press conference during which the man from Le Havre gave himself away like he rarely does.
In particular, he explained how the 2 hours 30 minutes gap between him and Yannick Bestaven four years ago had haunted his nights for a long time, confided that he had caught himself “talking to his boat from time to time” and allowed himself to “be a bit more spiritual“, before evoking his “flow”, which sometimes vanished, particularly before Cape Horn, “because Yoann had got into my head”, but finally returned at the best moment. “At the start of the South Atlantic, I wrote on the Velleda board in my cockpit: ‘Sail like you’, I did a mental reset, telling myself that I shouldn’t try to match Yoann’s way of sailing.”
The method has paid off, prompting David Sineau, team manager of Sam Davies’ Initiatives Cœur team to say: “I have a lot of respect for what Charlie has done. He’s starting out with a lot on his plate, with the scenario from four years ago to digest, the fact that he wasn’t able to take the start of the Jacques Vabre at the end of 2023 for medical reasons, and behind that, he’s succeeded; takes a huge amount of self-confidence. Architectural choices, route choices, commitment, it’s a master class on his part, and I include his team.” A team of “hitmen”, in the words of Maxime Sorel, “both highly competent in what they do and very human”. For Franck Cammas, “Charlie has tried to be good at everything, he’s someone who doesn’t like chance, the type to put everything in an Excel spreadsheet and follow it line by line, he’s totally a reference, he gives the image of the modern skipper”.
The austral turning point
and a more versatile boat
When asked about the key moments of this Vendée Globe, all mentioned the descent of the Atlantic, which required the skippers to be at the front of the pack so as not to miss the right car in the Indian Ocean. This is what happened with the famous first southern depression and the choice made by the skipper of Macif Santé Prévoyance, who was first to reach Good Hope, to head for its centre, whereas those chasing after him, with the exception of Sébastien Simon, opted to head north. “His logic was to get into the South with a lead in order to get away with the train. This small advantage gave him the opportunity to try this, but it was a very challenging commitment. We often hear that Yoann is the attacker, but Charlie also showed that he can attack“, comments the director of the Port-la-Forêt ocean racing centre, Jeanne Grégoire.
The experience of the previous Vendée Globe also played a role, as the winner confided in the press conference: “Four years ago, I don’t think I would have gone and put myself in this little mouse hole upstream of the meteorological monster. What’s more, I didn’t pass through the centre of Theta (a low in the North Atlantic), something I regretted.” Yann Eliès, who has accompanied Yoann Richomme on this campaign, concludes about this decisive option: “For me, victory came down to this, because in the specifications for Yoann’s boat, he had to put some distance in the South.”
Having taken the lead at Cape Horn with a lead of just nine minutes over his rival, Richomme admitted on Wednesday that he had only given himself “a 10% chance of winning”, knowing that the South Atlantic would be favourable to Charlie Dalin’s Verdier design. This has proved to be the case and validates the Le Havre-based skipper’s choice of a versatile boat, at ease in upwind and reaching transitions. “For the Atlantic, it helps to have a boat that’s easy in transitions and that takes off a little earlier,” concedes Alain Gautier, winner of the 1992-1993 Vendée Globe and Isabelle Joschke’s team manager. François Gabart, winner of the 2012-2013 edition under the colours of Macif and boss of MerConcept (which hosts the Macif Santé Prévoyance project), for his part mentions “a differential of 2 to 3 knots at the start of the flight“.
David Sineau points out that “as Charlie himself says, he had fairly easy conditions in the south, but if he had faced a series of downwind lows in very complicated seas, we might have learned different lessons”. Francis Le Goff, director of the Normandy Sailing League (where Charlie Dalin was trained), adds: “What surprised me, however, was his ability to stay in contact in strong downwind winds; in the other races, Yoann had more margin.” Alain Gautier points out that “it didn’t come down to much, I think Yoann could have made more of a difference in the south, he was a long way behind because of his choice to avoid the Kerguelen low, but he’s still the fastest in this Vendée Globe [17.95 knots real average speed compared to Charlie Dalin’s 17.79, but 658 miles more covered].” Jeanne Grégoire concludes on the subject of the boat: “My conviction is that good performances come from a good skipper/boat alignment, if you give Yoann the boat designed for Charlie and vice versa, it’s not going to work.”
Records galore
The latter is delighted to see that the top eight finishers in Friday’s rankings all went through the Figaro, most of them also via the Port-la-Forêt centre. For Francis Le Goff, who was race director of the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, “the passage through this one-design is extremely important, as the skippers get to know each other. And when they find themselves in the Vendée Globe at times when they know they’re going to have to put in 36 hours without sleep, that’s no problem for them, because they’ve learnt that on the Figaro.”
David Sineau added: “In this Vendée, the first time there was wind at Cape Finisterre, Nico (Lunven) beat the 24-hour record; before the equator, there were several to do better, and the same thing between Brazil and the Indian Ocean. Everyone says that the race is long and that you have to take it easy on the boat, but we clearly saw that no one wanted to give up the slightest mile and end up on the wrong side of the elastic in case it broke.”
At the finish, a number of records were broken during this tenth edition of the race: Sébastien Simon’s single-handed 24-hour monohull record (615 miles) and Charlie Dalin’s Vendée Globe record. In 64 days 19 hours and 22 minutes – “the time taken by Orange‘s Jules Verne in 2002″, smiled Jeanne Grégoire – he improved on Armel Le Cléac‘h’s time in 2016-2017 by 9 days and 8 hours. A time that doesn’t surprise most of our observers all that much. “Since the start of the Vendée, there have often been 4-5 days between each edition,” analyses François Gabart. “The last one was abnormally slow, and in the end, this difference of just over 9 days between 2016 and 2024 is more or less the same as between 2008 and 2016 (10 days).”
Alain Gautier explains this new record firstly by “the incredible trajectories that many record hunters would love to have” on several sections, in particular Brazil-Good Hope and in the South – “the frontrunners had to make nearly half as many gybes as the group behind” -, but also by the fact that “the Imoca boats are now able to go as fast as the lows, which makes an enormous gain”. Which leads Franck Cammas to say: “The 60-day barrier is possible, but everything has to line up, the weather, the speed and the reliability of the boats.” This was the case for Charlie Dalin and Yoann Richomme, who will have been spared any major technical problems, proof of the big step forward in this area compared to 2020.
Happy sponsors
As for Sébastien Simon, he lost his starboard foil, but that didn’t stop him from clocking up a time well under the record (67 days 12 hours and 25 minutes) and a third place on the podium, which came as a surprise to everyone. “What many of us underestimated was his capacity for resilience and questioning himself between Retour à La Base, where he was seriously injured before dismasting, and the start of the Vendée, and that’s where his real tour de force lies,” sums up Yann Eliès.
Will we see the top three finishers at the start of the Vendée Globe 2028? As soon as he arrives, Sébastien Simon has expressed his wish, and Yoann Richomme also seems ready to set off on the campaign to aim for victory. And their partners? Questioned last week on the subject, Paul-Henri Dubreuil, sponsor of Simon, wasn’t closing the door. What about Yoann Richomme’s sponsors? “It’s not the kind of decision you make in the euphoria of the moment, it’s something you study coldly,” replies Cédric Malengreau, Director of the General Secretariat and Corporate Communications at Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, while Sébastien Petithuguenin, CEO of Paprec, is more direct: “If Yoann wants to come back in 2028 with the aim of winning, we’ll be there to support him.”
As for Charlie Dalin, he didn’t want to look ahead to 2028, aiming for the 2026 Route du Rhum, although he has made no secret of his eventual Ultim ambitions. One thing is certain: Macif has no regrets about putting its trust in the skipper from Le Havre, with Jean-Marc Simon, the mutual insurance company’s health and provident director, announcing (see his interview on our website) a value in terms of advertising purchases as at 14 January evening of “80 million euros“, compared with… 28 million during the previous campaign.