There are races you win, there are races you lose and there are those that stay with you for a lifetime. For Armel Le Cléac'h, the Route du Rhum is a bit of all of this at the same time. He first looked at it with the eyes of a child, there were the boats, the great sailors, Saint-Malo, the Atlantic. Since then, he has crossed the oceans, circumnavigated the world, won the Vendée Globe, experienced the exhilaration of victories and that strange solitude of sailors when the land disappears behind them, but the Route du Rhum resists him. She even bullied him sometimes. In 2014, a hand injury prevented him from starting. In 2018, his boat capsized off the Azores and, for a few seconds, he thought he would die. In 2022, its drift barely breaks the race started. He returns to land, repairs and sets off again as if, between him and this race, the story was never quite finished. On November 1, 2026, he will once again be in Saint-Malo, at the helm of the Maxi Banque Populaire XI to cross the Atlantic to Pointe-à-Pitre.
franceinfo: Why, after everything the sea has given you and everything it has taken from you, do you still want to leave?
Armel Le Cléac'h: I have that, first of all I like competition, I like sport, then I especially like sailing. Of course, I like sailing at sea. It's true that the Route du Rhum, for me, is a long story. I had the chance to participate four times. The first two times, it went rather well because I finished once on the podium in 2010, in IMOCA, the Vendée Globe monohull boats.
“Since then, the multihull story has been very complicated and we are leaving this year with a strong ambition to try to win. That is clearly the objective.”
Armel Le Cléac'h
at franceinfo
We've been thinking about this Route du Rhum for almost, I would say, four years. Almost, after the arrival of the previous one in Pointe-à-Pitre, we were already planning for this year's one.
You know this race well, because you already watched it as a child. What did she mean to the little boy you were?
My first adventure with the Route du Rhum was in 1986. I was nine years old, I discovered the atmosphere of a big race start. I came as a family with my parents, my brothers and sisters. I was just starting Optimist at that age. I was far from imagining what adventure at sea in the middle of the Atlantic was like. I particularly remember a boat called Royal, which was equipped by Loïc Caradec, which was one of the largest boats at the start, which impressed me because it had a very large mast. I believe that on the second day of the race, early in the morning, at breakfast, we heard on the radio that his boat had capsized and that we had no more news of the sailor who, unfortunately, was not found. Afterwards, I had the chance to move to the other side of the barrier a few years later and to first be an actor in a team, to accompany a skipper who was leaving. Then, in 2006, I completed my first Route du Rhum, 20 years ago, to embark on the adventure of a first world tour which will take place two years later in the Vendée Globe.
You are second in 2018 in the Route du Rhum. You haven't slept much, the sea is rough and suddenly a float comes loose. The boat rocks. You find yourself hanging from a rope and you know that if you let go, you risk never being able to get back to the boat. You said that in that moment, for a split second, you said to yourself, "I'm going to die." Do we become the same sailor again after thinking that and after experiencing that?
It is, first of all, one of the most difficult moments of my career. It is certain that an accident like this is very rare and fortunately. You have to imagine as if you were on the highway and then you lose both wheels of the car and you are launched at full speed. One of the hulls comes loose because there is a mechanical breakdown and, ultimately, it is the survival instinct that takes over. We focus on what we can and then there is the post-accident period where we first try to recover physically and mentally. What I needed to move forward was to understand why I got to this situation. Had I not used my boat well? Did I make a wrong move? Did I overuse the platform? In fact this was not the case, it was not linked to the way I used the boat and, as a result, it reassured me in the fact that, until this accident, everything was going well, I was capable of steering this kind of machine. This is also why, afterward, I relaunched myself in the adventure, while still having the approval of those close to me and, in particular, of my close family of course. My wife, my children, because they experience it by proxy. I first wanted to be sure that they were ok, they gave me the green light because I explained to them that indeed it was a very rare accident and that we were not at all trying the impossible with these machines.
If you finally win the Route du Rhum, would it be another sporting victory or would, somewhere, you close a story that started when you were a child in front of the images of this race?
I would like to come and tell you about it in a few weeks.
“I think that, first of all, it’s a great human adventure.”
Armel Le Cléac'h
at franceinfo
The sporting result, of course, is important, but with age, with experience, I have also learned to take more meaning, ultimately, in what we do with the people around us. Yes, I would finally like to offer them this victory in a few weeks. We don't know what scenario we're going to have, we don't know the departure weather. We will find out a few days before leaving for Saint-Malo and that is what makes our profession so rich.
