Bol d’Or du Léman
Esteban Garcia and Jérôme Clerc have lightened their regatta schedule to concentrate on the most prestigious of them all. A winning bet for the new kings of Lake Geneva.
This time, it’s the right one! Realteam Spirit has finally won the Bol d’Or. Jérôme Clerc, skipper since the beginning of the adventure over ten years ago, and Esteban Garcia, team owner, have laid the final stone missing from the completion of their Lake Geneva masterpiece. Ironically, the fastest team ever to complete the Geneva-Le Bouveret and back course (Le Ruban Bleu), finally won the most prestigious of regattas in an 86th edition marked by the seal of slowness. A stopwatch of 15 h 30 min and 05 sec almost takes us back to a time when multihulls had not yet got their hands on the Bol.
This is the fabulous story of this regatta, which never really unfolds as you’d imagine, and which has been enriched by the victory of the TF35Realteam Spirit, which, for the occasion, does not emerge under this name as it is not taking part in the class championship. “A decision we took to better focus on our goal for 2025, the Bol d’Or, which we’ve been refusing to win for over ten years”, explains Jérôme Clerc. With the TF35 class out of the equation, we’ll have plenty of scope to optimize our boat. “No more, no less than what the others are doing,” the skipper adds.
So we’ll never really know whether Realteam Spirit was able to gain any technological advantage over the competition. Given the small gap to the chasing pack, Sails of Change 8 (2nd at 4 min) and Zen Too (3rd at 12 min), and the countless changes of leaders on the way back to Geneva, it looks as though it was the human factor that made the difference. And also, the trio’s strategic decision to equip their TF35s with straight daggerboards rather than their usual foils. A decision shared by all three podium finishers, which clearly made the difference when you had to go all the way down to 11th place to discover the first TF35 in foiler mode in the rankings: Marco Favale’s X-Wing, a newcomer to the circuit, which won the Bol de Carbone, rewarding the first foiler of the Bol. However, it finished a long way behind the daggerboard boats, including the TF35s, some M2s and Christian Wahl’s D35. This first victory for a TF35 in archimedean mode is a fine indication for the years to come. It also shows that the D35 has undoubtedly had its day, since Christian Wahl couldn’t keep up with the same drifts. Now better prepared and equipped specifically for long-distance racing in classic mode, the TF35s are going to be very hard to beat. All the more so, as Realteam Spirit was able to do, when it devotes all its time and preparation to a precise objective.
In the end, for Jérôme Clerc and Esteban Garcia, it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you’ve got the speed. Winning in 15 h 30 or breaking a record in 3 h 48, as was the case on March 27, 2023, has the same flavour. That of teamwork well done. And that’s why Realteam Spirit will go down in the history of Lake Geneva as one of the most versatile and insatiable teams of its generation. It all starts with Ricardo. A crazy ad. Libera for sale. 3,000 francs. That’s all it took for a band of merry men to pounce on the opportunity, led by Gauvain Ramseier, a member of Bordée de Tribord and a young, passionate and experienced regatta sailor. He has gathered around him a team capable of taming this Italian sled, which already won the Bol d’Or some thirty years ago. Carondimonio is basically a Libera Class B that has been lengthened to become a Class A,” explains Daniel Bouwmeester, one of the eleven crew members involved in this exciting adventure. People are more familiar with the Hungarian Libera Raffica, which was originally a Class A, and which has been lengthened again, with a mast much taller than ours.” While everyone imagined that Philippe de Weck’s K2, winner in 2024, was going to go for a ride, this was not the case. Much heavier than the Libera (1 tonne heavier), it had all the trouble in the world keeping constant speed in these particularly light airs. “We took the lead ahead of the K2 just before passing Le Bouveret, and after that it never saw us again,” says Daniel Bouwmeester. In the end, it was the QFX designed by Thomas Jundt that gave his son, Gauvain, the most trouble! A fine family story, barely tarnished by the one-hour penalty imposed on the QFX for a false start. This punishment left the last two places on the podium to Philippe de Weck’s two boats, K2 (2nd ) and Katana (3rd ). Champagne with the family.
The emotion of Benoît Deutsch in Surprise
Who doesn’t know the legendary Versoix coach? Benoît Deutsch is one of those familiar and loyal figures from Lake Geneva. A patient and pedagogical trainer who has put the first line in the hands of so many young apprentice sailors. He’s also a much-appreciated and sought-after race director for his ability to set courses for the most diverse classes. And finally, of course, he’s a formidable racer who has finally realized one of his most cherished dreams: to win the Bol d’Or in the premier Surprise class. For this one-design enthusiast, there’s nothing like a straightforward, even-handed victory. What’s more, perhaps even more so when the weather conditions were so light and complicated for the strategists to manage. Benoît Deutsch’s team didn’t win by chance, since it was made up of some very fine racers, including Victor Casas, Romain Defferrard and Benjamin Senften, who came 2nd in the Bol d’Or scratch race in 2023 on Didier Pfister’s M2 Swiss Medical Network, just behind the wizard of Lake Geneva, Christian Wahl. This year, the battle was particularly intense in the Surprise class. In a breathless finale, Benoît Deutsch edged out an ocean racing cador, Achille Nebout. Runner-up in the Class40 Transat Jacques Vabre in 2023, and 3 rd in the Solitaire du Figaro in 2022, he finished just 1 minute and 20 seconds behind the Club Nautique de Versoix team, whose victory was all the more memorable, triggering strong emotion on Benoît Deutsch’s familiar face.
