One year to go until the 8th Vendée Globe starts

by Bruno Ménard / Mer & Media Agency 6 Nov 2015 18:44 GMT 6 November 2016

14 skippers registered for the 8th Vendée Globe © Vendée Globe

The eighth Vendée Globe starts in exactly a year from now on 6th November 2016. Twelve months before the start, we can already see that there is going to be a great line-up in terms of the quality and the quantity. So far, 14 skippers have completed their registration and 13 others have completed their pre-registration.

More than ever we can be certain that the standard will be very high for the 2016-2017 Vendée Globe 2016-2017. With exactly a year to go to the start, without forgetting that there may well be other contenders, no fewer than 27 sailors have officially said they want to take part. More than half of them (14) have already completed the required paperwork and are officially registered.

This stage is a very important one for the sailors, as it marks the end of the administrative process and starts the countdown to the start of the race around the world. With their official number, the sailors can choose their position on the pontoon in Port Olona: the first, Jérémie Beyou gets first choice where he will moor his boat in the harbour in Les Sables. The second (Tanguy de Lamotte) will get second choice, Vincent Riou third choice and so on. The registration process has to be completed to benefit from this privilege.

We can see that four sailors will be competing for the fourth time in the Vendée Globe in 2016: Vincent Riou, Jean-Pierre Dick, Bertrand de Broc and Jean Le Cam. If they manage to complete the race around the world, Arnaud Boissières and Armel Le Cléac’h will also have achieved something remarkable: completing three Vendée Globe races in a row.

Coincidentally, the 14 sailors already registered are all French, which is far from the case for the 13 pre-registered, where there are six Frenchmen, but 7 from six other countries: Britain (Alex Thomson), Hungary (Nandor Fa), the USA (Rich Wilson), Italy (Alessandro Di Benedetto),... Three other foreign sailors are pre-registered, but wish to remain anonymous before officially announcing their campaigns.

With one year to go to the start the main thing is that the Vendée Globe is once again a success: with the new foiling monohulls and tried and tested boats, with a high standard of sailor, coming from France and beyond, everything is in place for this eighth race to be fascinating to follow.

10 rookies

Out of the 27, ten of the skippers on their way to the Vendée Globe will be racing in it for the first time, while the 17 others have already taken part at least once. Among them, one previous winner, Vincent Riou and three others, who have made it to the podium: Armel Le Cléac’h, Alex Thomson and Jean Le Cam. But many others can boast about returning again too, including the very experienced Jean-Pierre Dick, Yann Eliès, Sébastien Josse, Arnaud Boissières, Bertrand de Broc, Kito de Pavant etc… but there are also the newcomers, youngsters like Morgan Lagravière, Paul Meilhat and a few others.

The state of play with 365 days to go to the start:

The first 14 officially registered in order: