TOUGH GUY

KEVIN ESCOFFIER MAY BE FAMOUS FOR HIS DRAMATIC VENDÉE GLOBE RESCUE, BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE TO HIS STORY, AS HE TELLS HELEN FRETTER

- HELEN FRETTER

We all know how French solo skippers get so darn good. They move from youth sailing to Mini Transat and Figaro classes, where they drill for years. Then the lucky few step up into IMOCA and test themselves against each other at training camps like Port la Foret, refining their single-handed skills further and further. It's a production line of talent that no other nation can compete with.

But it's not the only way - even in France. Kevin Escoffier took another route, and the career he has built is all the more impressive for it.

Escoffier, now 42, is full throttle on his second Vendée Globe campaign for the 2024 race (see his new boat on page 78), but he only did his first solo IMOCA race in July 2020, racing in the Vendée Arctique. Four months later he set off on the pinnacle of single-handed competition, around the world non-stop. Escoffier's talents were well proven, but he honed his craft as an engineer and his reputation as one of the best ocean racing crew in the world before taking on the challenge of racing solo at the age of 40.

BRETON YOUTH

That the young Kevin did not leap straight into the world of short-handed racing is even more surprising given he was immersed in it from a childhood in Brittany. His father Franck-Yves was passionate about sailing, and moved the family from Paris to St Malo when Kevin and his two brothers were boys in order to be by the sea. Kevin quickly fell in love with the sport (along with rugby, an enduring passion), though even then he opted to crew rather than race solo in classes like the Optimist.

Yann Riou/polaRYSE Family holidays were spent cruising, and his father went on to compete in the Figaro and short-handed races like the Route du Rhum, teenage Kevin and his brothers earning pocket money by diving to scrub hulls before the start.