ARMEL LE CLÉAC'H, DESIRE AND COMPOSURE

Armel Le Cléac'h will take to the start line on 7 January as the winner of the Transat Jacques Vabre - Normandie Le Havre. History will record that this is Armel's first victory in the Route du Café, a race that was strangely missing from his list of achievements. His own story tells a different story: between Le Havre and Fort de France, Armel won his first major multihull race, quite simply. Sailing several hulls is not Armel Le Cléac'h's first love. The impressive CV of the man who first sailed in Saint-Pol-de-Léon was built on contact racing, first in dinghies and then in the Figaro, where he proved to be precocious. "On the water, he made his own choices and didn't follow the older guys. You didn't always see him go by and in the end he often won," recounts Jérémie Beyou, another hardman from the Bay of Morlaix, like Nicolas Troussel, whom Armel often meets up with in the summer for cruises around Cornwall or Ireland, each on the family boat. From the Figaro years spent together, it is Armel who emerges first. In 2000, he was selected for a youth training course and finished second for his first participation, hanging on to the best and never letting go, earning him the nickname Chacal. The animal waited just 3 years to add his name to the list of winners of the prestigious Solitaire du Figaro in those years when the score sheet included all the big names in sailing. In fact, it was a legend, Alain Gautier, whom he beat in 2003 by...13 seconds at the finish in Cherbourg, the smallest gap in the race to this day. Armel Le Cléac'h is as relentless as his lanky physique, built for performance. The machine image he gives off is not the real Armel," says Sébastien Josse, with whom he has just won the Route du Café. "Armel is a warm, happy guy who is great to be around at sea.

© Vincent Curutchet

From the Figaro to multihulls and the Vendée Globe

The Figaro years were followed by the ORMA in 2005, but the experience was short-lived: he capsized in the dantesque Route du Café 2005 in the company of Damian Foxall, a "painful experience" Armel remembers, enough to turn the page on multihull racing. The skipper bounced back in the IMOCA class. His second place in the 2008 Vendée Globe, achieved with a great deal of pain, was wiped out by the performance of Michel Desjoyeaux, who won after a fantastic comeback. The second campaign with Banque Populaire was a winning project, but Armel still finished second, behind François Gabart: "It was a big disappointment, but I realised in this mano a mano with François that at some point, you have to know how to make the break..." says the skipper, who capitalises on every experience, good or bad.


The third attempt proved to be the right one, and it took all the control and composure he was known for to stem Alex Thomson's onslaught.

"Armel is not an excited person. He's not someone who gets carried away, even in the face of adversity and difficulty."
Ronan Lucas, team manager de Banque Populaire

Which is not to say that the animal is incapable of emotion. Interviewed on his boat just after crossing the line in Les Sables d'Olonne in 2016, he simply declared "I didn't let go of anything, not a metre", before being overwhelmed by tears.


This victory in the Vendée Globe is the best accessory for new challenges. Multihulls have progressed, they have grown a lot in ten years and Armel feels ready to set sail again on several hulls. He set some fine records at the helm of Banque Populaire VII (Mediterranean and Route de la Découverte), but had to give up his place to Loïck Peyron in the 2014 Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe following an accidental injury. During the 2018 edition, at the helm of the new ULTIM Banque Populaire IX, he capsized after breaking a link arm. He almost lost his life in the accident, but got back in the saddle with Banque Populaire XI, which was more structured, less fickle and more seaworthy, destined for the round-the-world race of his dreams. The Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe turned him down again in 2022 after the trimaran's daggerboard broke. His clean victory in this year's Transat Jacques Vabre was as much a deliverance as it was a wake-up call for the big challenge ahead.