What can we expect in the Vendée Globe this year?

What surprises does the Vendée Globe 2020 have in store for us?

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• On Sunday, the start of the Vendée Globe will be given from Sables d'Olonne.

• Who are the favorites?

  What to expect during the race?

  20 Minutes

  answers all these questions.

They will be 33 at the start, and at the end there will be only one winner.

Koh Lanta ?

No, the Vendée Globe.

The great solo offshore race, without stopovers and without assistance, sets out again for a round-the-world race on Sunday.

Without Armel Le Cléac'h, defending champion focused on new goals, but with very good people nonetheless.

And machines that are hardly less impressive.

Did you like the 2016 Imoca foils?

You will love the fighter jets of 2020 which should, logically, bring down the Jackal record (74 days, 3 hours 35 minutes and 46 seconds).

No panic for lovers of slowness and adventure, the good old drift boats are still there.

Small inventory before the big departure.

No public along the quays

It may have escaped you, but a pandemic is raging in the world and all of France is semi-confined.

Logical consequence of this slump, there will not be a cat along the quays of Sables d'Olonnes, where 35,000 people had come to wish the adventurers good luck in 2016. What regrets the two-time winner of the Vendée, Michel Desjoyeaux, on France 3 Bretagne: “leaving the channel is very emotional, you interact with the public, this is where you measure the impact of what you are going to do.

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Asked about the question by

, Thomas Roût (LinkedOut) still sees a positive.

“Being away from the hustle and bustle still helps to keep the pressure off a little less.

It's the race of all superlatives in normal times and here we do not have that.

It certainly helps to have a little more serenity.

“Especially since the skippers had to observe confinement the week before departure.

Louis Burton (Bureau Vallée): “Instead of spending three and a half weeks in the village and ending these weeks on the knees, [last week] I finished organizing all my life on land and the last few days. is in confinement with my wife and children.

Thank you Wuhan.

Beyou, Thomson and Dalin, winning tiercé?

The geniuses Gabart (already absent in 2016) and Le Cléac'h have deserted the Imoca class, but the Vendée Globe will nonetheless remain tough.

High-flying projects have put supersonic boats in the hands of extremely skilled sailors such as Jérémie Beyou (3rd four years ago) on Charal, the unmistakable Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss and rookie Charlie Dalin on Apivia.

For the winner of the last edition, there is no doubt that the win will be played between these three.

Analysis.

Beyou:

“Between him and Thomson, I put a little extra on Jérémie.

His preparation is more complete in particular on knowledge of his boat, on the reliability of his boat.

He finished all his races in which he took part apart from the Route du Rhum but it was too early, and then behind he won a lot of races.

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Thomson:

“Everything didn't go as planned for Alex.

Unfortunately his launch last year was just before the Jacques Vabre where he had a big problem, a shock with an ofni.

He lost his pin so I think it upset him quite a bit in his preparation.

It will be an unknown, we have seen very little sailing and confronting others.

It will clearly be one of the favorites, but this somewhat shortened preparation will not make it easier for him.

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Dalin:

“He doesn't have the experience of the other two but had a good preparation with a victory over the Jacques Vabre which was the last big race on the circuit.

He is surrounded by the team of François Gabart, who has a lot of experience in the Vendée.

Even if this is his first Vendée Globe it is not necessarily crippling, so Charlie will surely be one of the big contenders.

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State-of-the-art foilers too new to go to the end?

Like Alex Thomson, other latest generation boats set sail for the Everest of the seas on Sunday.

State-of-the-art vessels on paper, extremely fast, but the timing of their projects may leave room for doubt in the long term in the Vendée, such as Arkéa Paprec (piloted by Sébastien Simon), whose second foil was only installed at the end of October.

Louis Burton: “There are 8 new boats which have gigantic foils and which run really faster in perfect conditions.

But some of these boats had a very short preparation, the confinement did not help the preparation.

Will they be able to take on a world tour?

Let's not forget that it's still a mechanical sport.

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Night installation of the second foil on Arkéa-Paprec - Arkéa-Paprec

Armel Le Cléac'h agrees and is rightly worried about the lack of information on the reliability of “these machines packed with technology, faster and faster and which need time to navigate.

"And more precisely of sailing time" in muscular conditions, which they ultimately had little.

On the contrary, the Jackal puts a coin on less modern but much more reliable outsiders.

“When you see a PRB-Kévin Escoffier or Samantha Davies-Initiatives Coeur couple, it's one of the big outsiders.

These are sailors who know their boat inside out and have boats that have already made several transatlantic races or even one or two round-the-world trips.

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The safeguards of adventure

The win, the Formula 1 of the seas, all that is brilliant.

But let's not forget that the Vendée Globe remains, let's dare the XXL cliché, a great human adventure.

Where, as Clarisse Cremer (Banque Populaire) laughed over a coffee, "something galley-like because you always have bullshit to deal with, hard to eat, hard to sleep, you're dirty ..." In short, the real sail, that of the Didac Costa saved by the firefighters at the start of Les Sables, the one where we blow the champagne when we pass Ecuador, where we screw the sound system thoroughly into the Doldrums because we have the whole ocean for us and the one where we almost starve because we had planned to be slow but not at this point either.

Sébastien Destremau will recognize himself.

Moreover, the last of the Vendée Globe is back in 2020 and says he has “no other competitor” than himself.

If those behind always go faster, why not go even slower in the back?

Sport

Vendée Globe: "Somewhere, the skippers are lucky to be doing this race in this context," said Armel Le Cléac'h

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