Vendee Globe form guide

We look the potential of the 20 singlehanded runners and riders setting off non-stop round the world on Sunday

Pos	Boat	Skipper	Nat	Skipper			Boat		Total
				Offshore experience	Singlehanded experience	Ability to recover	Speed	Reliability
				/5	/10	/15	/15	/20	/65
1	Ecover	Mike Golding	GBR	5	10	14	15	17	61
2	Sill et Véolia	Roland Jourdain	FR	5	10	13	15	14	57
3	Bonduelle	Jean le Cam	FR	5	9	13	15	14	56
4	PRB	Vincent Riou	FR	4	8	14	13	16	55
5	Temenos	Dominique Wavre	FR	5	10	14	11	15	55
6	Pro Form	Marc Thiercelin	FR	5	10	14	12	13	54
7	Virbac-Paprec	Jean-Pierre Dick	FR	4	8	10	15	14	51
8	VMI	Sébastien Josse	FR	4	8	13	11	14	50
9	Skandia	Nick Moloney	AUS	5	7	9	11	18	50
10	UUDS	Hervé Laurent	FR	5	10	12	9	10	46
11	Hellomoto	Conrad Humphreys	GBR	3	5	11	13	12	44
12	Arcelor Dunkerque	Joe Seeten	FR	4	9	9	9	13	44
13	Hugo Boss	Alex Thomson	GBR	3	5	12	14	9	43
14	VM Materiaux	Patrice Carpentier	FR	5	10	5	10	11	41
15	Akena Verandas	Raphaël Dinelli	FR	4	8	10	9	9	40
16	Max Havelaar/Best Western	Benoît Pernaudeau	FR	3	6	11	5	14	39
17	Ocean Planet	Bruce Schwab	USA	4	8	9	4	10	35
18	Benefic	Karen Leibovici	FR	3	6	12	2	10	33
19	Roxy	Anne Liardet	FR	2	3	6	3	9	23
20	Brother	Norbert Sedlacek	AUT	3	4	6	3	7	23

In the past we have conjured up the odds for major offshore races based on the past form of the boats and skippers blended with a healthy dose of our experience, gut instinct and those of others both French and English, press and race pundits alike. This time we have fired up Excel and decided to get a little more mathematical about the prospects of the 20 entries taking the start line on Sunday for the fifth Vendee Globe and how they will fare in this three month long, singlehanded endurance race.

To start with we set about establishing what were the most important qualities of a skipper and their steed not only to win or do well in the Vendee Globe, but to make it around the course. As the table below shows, on average over the last four Vendee Globes 45% of entries won't make it. This is usually due to gear failure or an accident damaging the boats causing them to pull out or in exceptional cases to be abandoned, or the boats have had to make port to fix a problem that requires outside assistance thereby resulting in their disqualification. Over the course of four races two Vendee Globe skippers have been lost at sea: British yacht broker Nigel Burgess in 1992 and Canadian Gerry Roufs four years later.

Past race stats	Tot entries	Finishers	%	Disqualified	Retired	Lost
1989-90	11	7	64	2	4
1992-3	14	7	50	1	5	1
1996-7	16	6	37.5	2	7	1
2000-1	23	15	65	3	5
2003/4	20
Tot	64	35		8	21	2
Av	16	8.75	55	2	5.25	0.5

Thus with 20 entries this time round, these stats would suggest that 10-11 boats will finish but in reality this will be weather dependent. The small amount of finishers for example in the 1996/7 race was largely due to the terrible weather in the Southern Ocean that resulted in the capsizes of the boats skippered by Tony Bullimore, Raphael Dinelli and Thierry Dubois and ultimately the tragic loss of Gerry Roufs during the tail end of a cyclone in the Pacific.

With this high attrition rate Mike Golding accurately compares the Vendee Globe to the Grand National horse race in the UK, where the scale of the competition, the three month duration of the course, the extreme and varied conditions, the luck required not to run into anything and the million and one other variables dictating the winners and losers.

Because of the importance of just finishing a significant proportion of our scoring in the top table is attributed to both the reliability of the boats plus a column suggested by Offshore Challenges' Mark Turner on the ability of the skipper to recover, the Ellen MacArthur column, showing whether the skipper is a technical genius or if they have two left thumbs when it comes to fixing things that will inevitably break on a race of this duration. Bear in mind skippers need to be able to turn their hand to fixinf anything - sails, deck gear, winches, electrics, electronics, computers, etc.

The reliability of the boat is based on how tried and tested it is or if it has shown a propensity to break on the race course. In our ranking several boats have fallen on this basis - the two new Lombard designs Sill et Veolia and Bonduelle were late launching and then Sill's keel foil suffered problems with 'flutter' requiring modifications to be made not only to herself but to Bonduelle her sistership. These boats have yet to prove themselves in any major offshore races, although they now have covered around 6,000 miles each and survived storm force winds.

Perhaps the worst to suffer in our ranking from a reliability standpoint is Alex Thomson's promising Hugo Boss. While having proved herself on the race course previously, this boat has only just emerged from a substantial refit and the massive team working flat out on board still has a long list of mainly electronics and electrical issues to solve before tomorrow's start.

Aside from Mike Golding's Ecover, Sill et Veolia and Bonduelle, the fourth new boat in this Vendee Globe, Jean-Pierre Dick's Virbac has also suffered in our scoring having dismasted twice in recent history, once in The Transat and in last autumn's Defi Atlantique. Yes, Dick's shore team explain, on the first occasion this was due to a vital rigging pin pulling out and on the second occasion because the boat was rolled. Regardless, the boat has still dismasted twice.

It could be argued that Mike Golding's immaculately prepared Team Group 4 dismasted within 24 hours of the start of the last Vendee Globe so why shouldn't this happen again? However the consensus is that this incident has instilled an unprecidented degree of prudence in the Ecover team this time round.

From a reliability standpoint some of the older more proven boats such as Nick Moloney's Skandia and Vincent Riou's PRB have scored highly.

Beyond the reliability issues the speed of the boat is clearly an important factor. In this ranking the four new boats top the list. Ecover has won The Transat, Virbac last year's Transat Jacques Vabre, Bonduelle the 1,000 Milles de Calais. The 1000 Milles has been the only occasion when the Lombard boats have lined up against the other Open 60s, but this was a light wind affair and the outcome was as much down to tactics as boat speed. The reality of this is that we will have to wait until next week before we can determine the relative performance of the boats.

An evolution of the boats for this race has been their upwind performance. In this respect Mike Golding's Ecover has proved the fastest to date although Alex Thomson's Hugo Boss has the longest boards following her recent refit but has not lined up against the competition in this mode. In terms of reaching ability only time will tell how these boats compare.

Designer Merfyn Owen told us this week that the VPPs show Ecover to be roughly two days faster round the world than the previous generation of boats. However as we have written about over the course of this week, the top 2000-1 generation boats have been heavily modified since the last race and may also be two days quicker now.

Beyond this comes the experience of the skipper. Rightly or wrongly we have divided skipper experience up between pure offshore experience and then the more highly scoring singlehanded experience, that includes the skill set peculiar to that discipline such as sleep deprivation, etc.

In this race there is an incredible wealth of experience. Pro Form's Marc Thiercelin for example is one of three skippers setting off on his third Vendee Globe. This is his fourth solo round the world voyage having also finished second in Around Alone. Mike Golding has sailed around the world westabout three times, once singlehanded, and completed the Vendee Globe course in 2000-1 and half the 1998 Around Alone. Dominique Wavre has four Whitbreads to his credit as well as the last Vendee.

Our view

Mike Golding we believe has the package and is the obvious choice to win the Vendee Globe.

In terms of raw talent this time round we personally believe that Jean le Cam is the man to watch. Aside from offshore sailing legend Philippe Poupon, le Cam is the only person ever to have won the Solitaire du Figaro, the effective world championship of solo offshore sailing, three times - Michel Desjoyeaux, the 2000-1 Vendee winner, has only won it twice - and back in the 1980s he dominated the Formula 40 multihull circuit. Although he is new to skippering Open 60s he has sailed them extensively as crew. He is also perhaps light on round the world experience having only sailed this course once with Eric Tabarly in the 1981 Whitbread on Pen Duick VI.

Roland Jourdain we don't feel has the same ruthless competitive streak and raw talent as le Cam, but has competed in the Vendee before and is the highest placed finisher from four years ago of any of the returning skippers. Saying this his experience from the Vendee has almost certainly benefitted le Cam, who is sailing a sistership to Jourdain's new Sill.

Of the older boats Alex Thomson clearly has the ability and the fearlessness/naivety to drive his boat fast but because he has been late to the start line it is widely felt that he will not last the course. Our favourites among those racing older boats are Dominique Wavre who finished second in The Transat. His boat Temenos appears to be going much better following her strict weight-cutting regime last winter. It could also be the year of Marc Thiercelin, who has the experience and a new boat that appears light.