Vendée Globe 2024: 44 candidates more than a year after the start

The Vendée Globe has never been so fascinating. For the tenth edition of the solo round the world trip, without stopovers and without assistance, there are already 44 skippers who have applied to participate: a record. Adventure, sharing, commitment and challenge with oneself, the values ​​that attract the interest of enthusiasts.

A regatta made unique by the diversity of the profiles of the candidates to participate!
As in every edition there is a great diversity of profiles among the 44 entries and this is what makes the Vendée Globe so special: each sailor has a unique story to tell.

There are many new arrivals, in fact 18 "rookies". The youngest skipper, Violette Dorange , is just 22 years old. He will participate in his first round-the-world race aboard the boat with which Jean Le Cam completed the 2020 Vendée Globe. “ Le Roi Jean” , the emblematic face and oldest skipper of the race, is expected to line up at the start for the sixth time , on his brand new foilless IMOCA just launched.

Among the 6 candidates - as many as in 2020 - Sam Davies , Justine Mettraux and Clarisse Crémer have great ambitions at the helm of high-performance boats and can't wait to participate in the final challenge to climb to the top step of the podium.

Damien Seguin , the first disabled skipper to complete a Vendée Globe in 2020-2021, is expected to return alongside Jingkun Xu , a young Chinese skipper with an arm amputation. Their participation underlines that the Vendée Globe is also a real demonstration of inclusion.

A more international regatta than ever

The internationalization of the Vendée Globe is reaching new levels: participation is arriving from the four corners of the planet! If 2020 was a record year in this sense, 2024 is once again, proving that the trend is unstoppable. The candidates include 16 international skippers, representing more than a third of the registrations, compared to 12 in 2020. Furthermore, the 11 nationalities represented are distributed across 4 of the 5 continents of the globe. This internationalization goes hand in hand with the diversification of profiles, giving the regatta an extremely varied multicultural aspect.

Sailors increasingly committed to social issues and environmental protection

From social to environmental protection and medical research, the Vendée Globe is seen as an opportunity for more and more skippers to use their visibility to support the causes close to their hearts. There are more than 30 projects supported by sailors. Some, like Tanguy Le Turquais with Lazare or Manuel Cousin with Coup de Pouce, have named their boat after the charity they support, to ensure maximum media visibility. Others take a different approach, such as Thomas Ruyant and Sam Goodchild , who sail under the common banner of the collective " We sail for people and planet ", which works to help people and the planet.

The Initiatives-Coeur project, skippered by Sam Davies , allows children with heart defects to be operated on in France when this is impossible in their country. Their ambition is to save 500 children. Maxime Sorel , skipper of the new IMOCA V and B - Monbana - Mayenne, has been involved with "Vaincre la Mucoviscidose" for almost 10 years, an association which he has promoted through his various ventures, at sea during his 2020/21 Vendée Globe and on land when he climbed the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest. Giancarlo Pedote

's project and Prysmian Group, gives visibility to two initiatives: support for Electriciens sans frontières, which has been working for over 30 years to guarantee access to electricity and water to the world's poorest populations through local, effective and sustainable solutions, and “Sailing4Ocean”, the all-Italian project for monitoring the health of the oceans, made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change and EOSS, the Electronics and Optical Sensing Solutions division of Prysmian Group.

40 seats at departure, 10 November 2024

The Vendée Globe is a regatta with a limited number of places: there will be 40 places available in 2024. In order to participate, a qualification is required (each skipper-boat combination must have participated in at least two solo regattas from a selection of regattas on the IMOCA calendar - of which one in 2022 or 2023 and one in 2024 - and having completed at least one), and if the number of qualifiers exceeds 40, a selection is activated based on the number of miles traveled in a series of regattas identified by the organisation, with some exceptions relating to the construction of new vessels.
In the 2020 edition, 37 skippers applied. In the end, only 33 took part in the regatta. To find out which 40 competitors will set sail on November 10, 2024, we will have to wait for the last qualification and selection regatta: the New York Vendée - Les Sables d'Olonne, which will start from the United States on May 29, 2024.