Route du Rhum

"One of the motivations for my commitment – apart from the fact that I’d never competed in the Route du Rhum – was that I was vying against Loïc Peyron for the World Champion title. A title awarded every four years to rank the performance of 600 skippers. We were neck to neck: if Loïc won the event, he'd pass ahead of me in terms of the points accumulated in the past four years. I won the event in the monohull class while Loïc was demasted…

My monohull victory was, to say the least, surpassed by the legendary multihull victory of Florence Arthaud, the first woman to win one of the big classic ocean-racing events. This competition strengthened our friendship, and it was after our arrival, while we were sailing leisurely side by side around the Îles des Saintes, that we started thinking about the Jules Verne Trophy…"

Titouan Lamazou