Franck Vallée: “Violette is the ideal successor to Sam”

Unsurprisingly, Violette Dorange has been confirmed at the helm of the Imoca Initiatives Cœur until the next Vendée Globe; she succeeds Sam Davies, who remains with the team as a coach. Sailorz looks back at this announcement with Franck Vallée, President of Initiatives, co-partner of the project with K-Line.

When and how was the decision made to entrust the helm of Initiatives Cœur to Violette Dorange?
At the end of the Vendée Globe, we and K-Line were quite keen to sign on for another four years. Since Sam had told us she wanted to continue competitive sailing, but no longer solo, we had to look to the future if we wanted to do the Vendée Globe 2028. The choice of Violette seemed interesting to us, but we didn’t know her that well yet. The fact that she could spend the season with us, and notably the Transat Café L’Or with Sam, allowed everyone—her, Sam, and us—to better understand and appreciate one another. We gave ourselves the whole year to see how everyone’s journey evolved, but very quickly, we saw that things were going to click between Sam and Violette, and between us and Violette. The transat was a particularly good test run for them; it proved the relevance of our choice. When I spoke with Sam at the finish, she told me that we had found the ideal successor, both from a sporting and a communication standpoint. There was a convergence in wanting to move forward with her; it seemed natural to take her through to the Vendée Globe 2028, but we preferred to wait until the end of the season to formalize it. That was definitively done at the end of the year, and we waited until after the holidays to announce it.

Why is she, in your opinion, the ideal successor?
It is not easy to succeed Sam, who is both an excellent skipper and a great communicator, with admirable smile, drive, and determination; she has this positivity that always brings something radiant to the project. She is passing on a precious legacy to Violette, but I believe Violette has all the qualities to take up the torch and the helm of this project. She has often managed to bring along an audience that knew very little about sailing, and what matters in this project is reaching more people. This is both to raise funds more widely for Mécénat Chirurgie Cardiaque to operate on more children, and to increase our brand awareness by building a strong positive feeling around the project.

In the press release, there is no longer any mention of the third partner, Vinci Energies. Does this mean the group is withdrawing?
Yes, they had been associated with the project for eight years; they played the game with us, but they had to make partnership choices that we can fully understand at the scale of multinational groups like Vinci Energies. We thank them, and we are now looking for one or more partners to replace them.

This change of skipper is accompanied by a change of team, as you will no longer be relying on David Sineau’s Planète Racing structure, who explained to us last July that you “no longer had exactly the same desires.” Can you confirm this?
Yes, absolutely, we are in agreement with David on that. He dreamed of a winning project, whereas that has never fundamentally been the goal of Initiatives Cœur. We have certainly always agreed on valuing sportsmanship to be a strong outsider, but within certain limits. We know very well what it means financially and in terms of sporting demands, which can often be at the expense of the project’s general communication. That’s not the DNA of Initiatives Cœur; we don’t want to go beyond a certain threshold. It remains a project characterized by a form of sobriety. We notably had no ambition to build a new boat; we were very clear with K-Line on that. That said, I fully understood David’s approach; he’s a sportsman, he was a competitor himself, but these are the kinds of choices made every four years in this transfer market.And so you have created your own team around Ronan Deshayes?
Yes, we are starting fresh with a team of six people called Sailing Team Initiatives Cœur—the diminutive is pronounced “Sticker”—and is based in the Glorieux 1 building in Lorient, next to Team Paprec. Having Ronan at the head, who was our first boat captain for Tanguy’s first Vendée Globe in 2012, feels like a nod to the past and a form of regeneration. Regarding the change of skipper, I felt there was a certain coherence in recreating a group with perhaps slightly different visions in how to manage a sports team. But I want to congratulate and thank David and his team because they did a great job for us by providing Initiatives 4, a beautiful boat designed by Sam Manuard, which deserves the necessary upgrades to perform even better. But we are going to take it crescendo, step by step. Sobriety means putting one foot in front of the other; we aren’t going to try to climb three steps at once.

Sam is staying with the team. Was that a wish on her part?
It was a wish on our part first and foremost, because Sam still has so much to contribute. She is someone with enormous technical expertise and interpersonal skills; we really wanted to keep her positivity and drive within the project. Plus, Violette appreciates her very much. In the logic of a project that is both charitable and sporting, but also sober, it was healthy for her to stay with us. So, she will be coach for this year; after that, we’ll see, because she wishes to do some crewed racing, notably The Ocean Race, but we know she will always remain one of the project’s most beautiful ambassadors.You speak of sobriety; does that mean a budget of around 1-1.5 million euros per year?
I try not to give figures, because they can be interpreted in several ways, but it’s a bit more than that. The ranges are more like 1.5 to 2.5 million, and it depends on the year and the work we do on the boat.What will be the sporting objectives over the next three years?
We will set them once we’ve completed the winter refit, during which we know we won’t be able to do everything we want, as we’ve just taken back the boat and the priority was rebuilding a team. 2026 will remain a year of transition and a learning phase for Violette. We will likely have a more significant refit during the winter of 2026/2027, with the goal of progressing the boat without skipping steps. Violette may be very young at 24, and she has certainly moved very fast in recent years, but she has always done so with method and rigor, without overblown ambitions; she shows great maturity, and everything is well thought out.