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French skipper Tom Laperche won the Route du Rhum, a solo trans-Atlantic yacht race from Saint-Malo, France, to Guadeloupe, on Saturday, setting a record time in his first attempt at the highly regarded event.
The 29-year-old guided his Ultim multihull (the largest class of ocean-racing boats with more than one hull) SVR Lazartigue across the finish line in Pointe-a-Pitre, the main city of the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, at 10:31 p.m. local time (2:31 a.m. GMT on Sunday) after six days, 13 hours and 27 minutes at sea.
He beat the previous record, set by Charles Caudrelier in 2022, by about six hours and 20 minutes.
As he approached the finish buoy in the Guadeloupean night, Laperche celebrated with a barefoot leap onto the trampoline net of his trimaran while waving to his technical team on a following craft.
Having headed the fleet alone for several days, he skillfully handled the perilous circumnavigation of Guadeloupe, multiplying maneuvers because of a headwind that prevented him from sailing directly toward the Basse-Terre buoy.
Thomas Coville and Louis Burton, meanwhile, were expected to complete the podium on Sunday in Pointe-a-Pitre.
Laperche, a sailing prodigy who spent most of his teenage years on the water, had never before taken the start of the famous solo race, which set sail from Saint-Malo last Sunday in its 13th edition.
It had been a childhood dream of the sailor from Morbihan, in western France, whose father, a dentist, finished fourth in the race in the Multi 50 category in 2010.
Laperche started as favorite at the helm of SVR Lazartigue, a boat designed in the stables of Charente sailor Francois Gabart.
Launched in 2021 and winner of the Transat Cafe L’Or in 2025, the big blue trimaran was considered, along with Armel Le Cleac’h’s Banque Populaire, to be the best-prepared Ultim in the fleet at the start of the Rhum.
Le Cleac’h was on Laperche’s heels through the first third of the crossing. But he capsized and was rescued “in good health” several hours later by a Panamanian cargo ship.
Laperche received a one-hour and two-minute time bonus for temporarily diverting towards Le Cleac’h, who had activated his distress beacon.
“After the accident, the shape of the race changed a little. Risk management became much more important, relegating performance management a bit further down the list of priorities,” said Franck Cammas, winner of the Route du Rhum in 2010 and a member of Laperche’s routing team this year.
Laperche’s significant lead “made it possible to ease off in the face of the tricky obstacles still to be overcome: tropical lows, violent squalls, thunderstorms and gusts causing instantaneous jumps of 10 knots,” Cammas added.
From the start, Laperche sailed an almost perfect race, taking the lead in the first few miles and holding it all the way to the finish.
Behind the stars of the Ultim category, the battle continued among skippers in the other classes, who have had to deal with numerous adverse weather events even though the race set off in historically mild conditions.
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