Vendée Globe Sailing Race Reaches a Tight Finish

Dalin and Bestaven embraced on the red-carpeted dock before the camera lights flooded them. Dalin faded into the crowd as Bestaven was handed the heavy artistic metal globe with a sculptural sail erupting from its center.

“I thanked him for his reaction, despite the controversies of the time compensation,” Bestaven said at a news conference. “He said, ‘No controversy.’ I told him, “It will be you in four years holding this trophy.’”

Dalin looked at the moment as one with two winners. “My first goal was to finish,” he said before the news conference. “My sport goal was to finish ahead of the second boat. No one is ever going to take that away from me.”

Despite the pandemic, which cut budgets and preparation times in half, the skippers left Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, on Nov. 8 with a mix of old and new IMOCA 60 monohull class raceboats. Six female skippers, the most in the history of the race, were in the fleet.

By Thursday afternoon, eight skippers had finished, with the top seven coming in within 12 hours of one another, making it the closest ending to a race in which finishes are often separated by days. The 17 remaining sailors were strewn between the Falkland Islands and the Bay of Biscay.

This Vendée was punctuated by abnormal global weather patterns that allowed for relatively close competition several times.

“This has been the elastic Vendée Globe,” said Mark Turner, who managed three Vendée campaigns, including Ellen MacArthur’s in the 2000-1 race, in which she finished second. “Usually the rich get richer. This time it was compression after compression. Honestly the weather was possibly a bigger factor than talent or a new boat. You won’t see that pattern for 20 years.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/sports/sailing/vendee-globe-finish-sailing.html