74 duos will start the Transat Café L’Or on Sunday from 2 p.m. As before every major race, Sailorz has gathered a panel of experts to discuss the contenders. After the Ocean Fifty and Class 40 last week, the focus is on the Imoca and Ultim classes with Imoca skippers Paul Meilhat, Sébastien Simon, and Nicolas Lunven, Charles Caudrelier, who is awaiting his next Gitana 18 in December, the race director of the 24h Ultim, Christophe Gaumont, and the director of the Finistère offshore racing hub, Jeanne Grégoire.
With 18 Imoca boats at the start, including 13 foilers, the Transat Café L’Or features a smaller field (there were 40 in 2023, 23 in 2021), which is explained by this year’s transfer window post-Vendée Globe, but also by the proximity of The Ocean Race Europe, which only finished on September 22 in Montenegro. “Returning from the Mediterranean, the boats only had a week’s break in Lorient before being delivered to Le Havre again. Humanly, you’ve been away from home for three months and the change in weather context is harsh!” explains Paul Meilhat, whose contract with Biotherm has ended, but “would not have imagined combining the two events if the opportunity had arisen.”
In fact, only Allagrande Mapei (Ambrogio Beccaria/Thomas Ruyant) and Paprec Arkéa (Yoann Richomme/Corentin Horeau) have chosen to participate in both races, as have Francesca Clapcich and Will Harris, the former now at the helm of Boris Herrmann’s former Malizia, renamed 11th Hour Racing. And while our experts consider the sequence to be challenging, they still place Paprec Arkéa at the top of their predictions, tied with Macif Santé Prévoyance (Sam Goodchild/Loïs Berrehar).
“Yoann and Corentin have sailed many miles together, the former has experience, the latter, who will skipper this Imoca next year, will be at 2000 percent!” estimates Jeanne Grégoire. “The Koch Finot-Conq designs are superior in strong downwind breeze. At 15 knots on flat water, the Verdier boats are equal, but in a strong trade wind, they are on average a knot faster,” adds Nicolas Lunven. The person responsible for pre-race routing for the Finistère Offshore Racing hub adds: “If you cover the 2,500 miles between the Canaries and Fort-de-France at an average of 20 knots in a straight line, that means five days of racing and therefore a difference of over 100 miles at the finish. It’s very simple math, but you have to keep that in mind.”
Macif Santé Prévoyance in pole position
Our experts also highlight the somewhat unusual course for the Imocas (4,350 miles), channelled by the Canary Islands archipelago to be left to starboard, which, according to Paul Meilhat, “can really block the game.” “After the Canaries, it risks looking like a speed race,“ confirms Sébastien Simon. “But the question is not so much what will happen after as what will happen before!” And the third-place finisher in the Vendée Globe, who is closely monitoring the construction of his new Verdier design at Carrington in England, sees Macif Santé Prévoyance as the logical favorite: “They will win because the boat is very versatile, extremely fast upwind, which is crucial for the descent, and the tandem is full of confidence. The results [victory in the Course des Caps and the Défi Azimut, Editor’s note], the momentum with the recent announcements [new campaign until 2030, see our article], all that works in their favor.”
The duo formed by Sam Goodchild and Loïs Berrehar is therefore in the lead on the Imoca that won the last Vendée Globe, a boat whose sistership Association Petits Princes-Quéguiner, launched in 2025, is considered by some to be too young in the class to do better than an honorable place. Only Nicolas Lunven imagines it on the podium, in third position: “The Verdier design remains the reference, it benefited from the expertise of MerConcept, so its crew immediately found the controls in training and in races [second in the Course des Caps, victory in the Fastnet, Editor’s note].“ Jeanne Grégoire, for her part, says she is “very impressed by Elodie’s level of maturity in the overall management of her project since the start of the season.”
At the same level as the Elodie Bonafous/Yann Eliès duo, our experts place that of Allagrande Mapei, composed of two defending champions, Ambrogio Beccaria (winner in Class40) and Thomas Ruyant (who won in 2021 and 2023 in Imoca), but hampered in its preparation, between its structural issue on the Course des Caps and its collision with Holcim PRB at the start of The Ocean Race Europe.
For the third step of the podium, they are betting more on Charal, led by the tandem Jérémie Beyou/Morgan Lagravière. “They are hungry, have worked hard on the boat, and there could be a Morgan effect for his incomparable feel,” emphasizes Sébastien Simon, who recalls that the latter accompanied Thomas Ruyant on his last two victorious Imoca editions. A feel that Jeanne Grégoire also highlights, who also observed an improvement in the Manuard design during the last training sessions in Port-La-Forêt: “They take off earlier than before, especially upwind, and that is a crucial variable in all transitions. The battle will be very tight in any case, and the podium will be decided on small details.”
Our experts’ podium: 1. Macif Santé Prévoyance and Paprec Arkéa, 3. Charal
Two “maxi favorites” in Ultim
With 6,200 miles ahead of the bows, an incursion into the Southern Hemisphere, and the Doldrums to cross both ways, it is a very complete menu awaiting the Ultims, for whom, in everyone’s opinion, the ban on routing will have no consequences on anyone’s ambitions. Race director of the 24h Ultim, the last confrontation before the Transat Café L’Or, Christophe Gaumont notes that “all the boats have clearly progressed in one year, not just Maxi Banque Populaire XI with its new foils.” This is confirmed by Jeanne Grégoire, who brought the four boats together for a training session in Port-La-Forêt this autumn: “They weren’t all at the same level depending wind angles, but they were always in contact, it was very beautiful to observe!”
Winner in 2021 with Franck Cammas, Charles Caudrelier is, for his part, “impressed by the progress of Maxi Banque Populaire XI which takes off earlier and proves to be much more efficient upwind.” The defending champion, the Ultim led by Armel Le Cléac’h and Sébastien Josse, is also consistently cited as the winner by all our experts, but systematically tied with SVR-Lazartigue! “Excluding a race incident, we don’t really see what could prevent one or the other from winning,” summarizes Christophe Gaumont.
Winner of the two confrontations this year (Fastnet and 24h Ultim), the VPLP design of Tom Laperche and Franck Cammas, second in Fort-de-France in 2021 and 2023, is considered by Charles Caudrelier to be “the most beautiful platform.” A platform reputed to be fragile, which is no longer the case for the person who is refining his Gitana 18, the next Ultim to take flight. “They have had reliability problems in the past, but sometimes due to bad luck, and they are not major problems. The boat is very good, Tom is a pure talent, and Franck is one of the best in this kind of exercise.”
With only four boats at the start (there were five in 2023), betting on a podium also means determining the weak link in the small family of large flying trimarans. Jeanne Grégoire sums up the opinion of many by saying: “Sodebo will be there in the strong conditions, but retains small speed deficiencies that it risks paying for at one point or another.” For Christophe Gaumont, the big question mark remains “the level of handling by Anthony Marchand and Julien Villion on Actual Ultim 4.” The former Gitana 17 – which “has not evolved technically for two years,” according to its former skipper Charles Caudrelier – clearly remains a reference in the category, as it is most often cited to complete the podium.
Our experts’ podium: 1. Banque Populaire XI and SVR-Lazartigue, 3. Actual Ultim 4
Photo : Julien Champolion
