Monsieur Race Director

The Daily Sail caught up with Denis Horeau, the man in charge of the Solitaire du Figaro

Like many in his profession Denis Horeau is a man who moved from a career racing into an administrative role on land. Today as Race Director of the Solitaire du Figaro he is in charge of one of France's most important sailing events and one that many in singlehanded ocean sailing regard as their world championships.

For Horeau it is all change this year, with the advent of the new Beneteau Figaro 2, the class' new boat. This is a little longer and promises to be a lot quicker than the original version, although it is going to take a while for the fleet to refine them to the same degree as the old ones.

"It is going to be a year of discovery," says Horeau, "to see how it is going to work in the future. No one knows the real speed of the boat. We are all planning that it will be that much faster. So my purpose this year is to discover the boat, the new competitiors and from this to adapt the format of the Figaro for 2004 and the future."

In the Figaro class there is an interesting dynamic where the class is in theory all powerful. So Horeau had no say in the concept of the new Marc Lombard design. "The position of the class is like a child in front of his father. You want be independent from your father, but being an adult is pretty difficult. They [the class] say the boat is our business, we want to be independent, but they depend upon the organisers." The class is run mostly be the skippers themselves including Yann Elies and 2002 winner Kito de Pavant.

However Horeau says that the early indications are that the boat is good. "It is simple reliable, hopefuly strong and stiff and easy to handle and this is exactly what is needed because the major point of this circuit is to have a simple, cheap boat and a very strong competitive side. Because it is cheap and simple you will have a big number of entrants and therefore good competition. If you want to be the first you have to be very strong and with many compeittiors it is very difficult to win."

Horeau says the new boat will present him with a few more headaches than the old one. "The difference between upwind and downwind will be more important. Before they used to do 6.5 knots upwind and 8-9 knots downwind. The new boat will be capable of 7 knots upwind but 12-14 downwind which means that a leg of 500 miles - you could do it in two days downwind, or four days upwind. So we will have to decide at the beginning of each leg whether we're going to have a long or short course, because each leg must not be less than three nights at sea."

The added speed of the boat is welcome to Horeau who is keen to expand the race course. "That has been my target for four years now: to make the race course bigger. I want to go to Lisbon Porto, Scotland, Holland, Belgium..."

Equally he is very keen to get more international competition. "All over Europe there are some fantastic competitors, but for many reasons France has been developing singlehanded racing, meanwhile all the Anglo-Saxon countries have been developing Olympic sailing, You [the Anglo Saxons] are fantastically clever in the Olympics, while we don't have the mental structure to make a team. You have that. Meanwhile we are extremely good at singlehanding. If you take an Olympic sailor from the UK and put him on a Figaro Beneteau, he will lose - he will be 35th. It is not that he is bad, but it is not his kind of sailing. I really want to create the structure to turn those sailors into singlehanders...I want to dig the Channel Tunnel!" (Now there's a challenge...)

Horeau says he would like to see singlehanded training centres like the one they have in Port la Foret in other countries around the world, such as the UK. "I've been working for two years on developing an international exchange using a relationship with the French sailling federation (the FFV) to create the link."

In internationalising of the class this he is encouraged by the involvement of the boat's builders Chantier Beneteau who are marketing the boat, and therefore the class and ultimately his race through their European agent network.

Already the cosmopolitan flavour of the class looks set to pick up with five boats sold to Spain, two to Belgium and two to the UK - one is going to Offshore Challenges, while the other has been bought by Mike Golding Yacht Racing. Both camps certainly want to use them for participation, but Figaro boats also represent a reasonable investment as there is always a demand to charter good boats.

Many people it seems have been holding off getting involved with the Figaro class until the new boat was launched.

When we spoke to Horeau during the Salon Nautique an impressive 49 new Figaros had already been sold (it is believed 60 had gone by the end of the show), a number to some of the biggest names in French sailing. Trimaran skippers Loick Peyron, Alain Gautier and Michel Desjoyeaux have bought boats as has Vendee Globe sailor Marc Thiercelin and Halvard Mabire. "Most of them thought that the last boat was not fun," believes Horeau. He also expected solo sailing veteran Philippe Poupon to get one.

It will be interesting to see who else comes out of the woodwork.