Paris (AFP)

Big favorite in the Vendée Globe, Jérémie Beyou left nine days after the rest of the fleet due to damage.

He completed the round the world solo and non-stop on Saturday in 13th position with the feeling despite the doubts and the disappointment of having won "a victory".

"I knew it was going to be hard to set off a second time, to be at sea, and I was not mistaken," Charal's skipper told AFP a few hours before crossing the finish line at the off Sables d'Olonne, the end of a three-month journey with an "improbable" scenario.

Sunday 8 November, the 44-year-old sailor takes the start with 32 other competitors, "serene" and "confident".

Two days later, his latest generation flying boat struck an ofni (unidentified floating object) off the coast of Spain.

"It's a combination of circumstances. I break the sheet bar, and while I'm fixing it, I type something, all my tools wind up in the rudder up system, the rudder comes crash on the transom, the unlikely thing, that will never happen twice. My detection system that doesn't work either. Everything goes backwards, "he explains.

Beyou returned to Les Sables d'Olonne to repair and set off again, as provided for in the regulations.

- "Technical knockout" -

"The question of not leaving crossed my mind, you took an uppercut in the face, you're technical knockout. Quickly you have the whole environment around, the audience, it was madness . I'm coming back, France is confined, people are not allowed to go out and there were thousands of people on the dikes, "he recalls.

Beyou leaves on November 17 and has not finished asking questions.

"You really wonder why you do it, what makes you stick at the beginning is doing it for others. The catastrophic weather going down the Atlantic, every two seconds you want to stop. after a while you understand all the benefit, all the pride that you are going to take from having managed to start again, but that comes in a second step, ”said the navigator, who struggled to catch up with the last of the race.

"Finding myself with the fleet allowed me to have classification objectives. This frustration, this question of asking me why you're here has hardly ever left me. Why?" He admits.

The stress will also have always been there.

"You tell yourself that you are not in the right spiral, there is no reason for this to stop! It makes you very humble, it leads you to ask yourself lots of questions".

- "It sails well" -

"The guys who leave knowing there's zero chance they'll be on the podium, why are they doing it? I didn't understand. Finding myself in that situation was a real eye-opener for me. Similar round-the-world tour, even longer, on less prepared boats, not fast enough to be able to slip away in front of dangerous weather phenomena but they are racing, not out for a ride. I did not imagine it ", he confesses .

"Hats off to them, it's sailing well. They're competitors too. There are plenty of people who stay ashore, they have the courage to go."

Without hope of winning the Vendée Globe, Beyou did not give up.

"The dropouts hurt, they are super hard to live with and you drag them behind you for a very long time. There, it's a victory, that changes everything. I won, not the race, it's Yannick (Bestaven) and brilliantly, but I won because I returned to humility. The sea, sport is that too. It may not be the most glorious goal, but it is a goal nonetheless ".

Beyou was eager to reunite with her team, and her two children (13 and 17 years old).

"During the whole race, my children sent me messages, always positive, there I discovered that they had grown up. They also dreamed of seeing their father win the Vendée Globe, they passed over it, they have been there ... "

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