It is a remarkable sort of race in which the front-runner can lead the back of the pack by half the globe. It is even more remarkable when after 74 days at sea only a few hours separate the winner from the challenger who almost caught him.
Yesterday the Frenchman Armel Le Cléac’h clinched the Vendée Globe, the supreme quadrennial test of human sinew and carbon fibre, the round-the-world race that pits sailor and yacht against the doldrums (twice) and the fury of the Southern Ocean. Early today Britain’s Alex Thomson was due to follow Le Cléac’h across the finish line off Les Sables d’Olonne after staging an epic fightback from more than 800 miles behind. Both men broke the record by four days.
The Vendée Globe is arguably the toughest test of human endurance ever devised. No sailor who hopes to win can snatch more than a few minutes’ sleep at a time. All have to face icebergs and winds of up to 65 knots in the vast grey ring of water that separates Antarctica from the rest of the world.
This was Thomson’s fourth attempt. He had to retire from the first two because of damage to his boat. On the third he finished third, in record time for a British sailor and two weeks faster than Ellen MacArthur when she was placed second in 2001.
This time Thomson was foiled by a foil, the slender underwater wing designed to lift his boat clear of the water in strong winds. Two weeks in it hit an undersea object and broke. By Christmas he seemed out of contention, but after rounding Cape Horn he closed remorselessly on Le Cléac’h.
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No Briton has won the Vendée Globe, but Thomson has won the hearts of the huge French crowds that see its sailors off and welcome them home as latter-day Vasco da Gamas. He says that he’ll be back again in 2020. Perhaps by then his compatriots will have acquired the French fascination for les grands marins en solitaire.