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Landed by Banque Populaire, Clarisse Crémer announced on Wednesday in a press release that she had found a boat, a team and a sponsor to revive herself, despite her maternity, in view of the Vendée Globe 2024.
Landed by Banque Populaire, the Frenchwoman Clarisse Crémer announced on Wednesday April 19 that she had found a boat, a team and a sponsor to revive herself, despite her maternity, in view of the Vendée Globe 2024.
The 33-year-old sailor has joined the team of Briton Alex Thomson, recent buyer of the ex-Apivia Banque Populaire intended for her, and will take over the helm of this high-performance Imoca (60-foot monohull) for two years, thanks to the partnership of L’Occitane in Provence.
At the beginning of February, the young woman, 12th in the last Vendée Globe and mother of a little girl in November, plunged the sailing world into embarrassment by announcing that she had been let go by her sponsor because of her pregnancy.
Indeed, new qualification rules for the Vendée Globe take into account the participation in a series of races upstream, and Banque Populaire was worried about the accumulated delay compared to its competitors.
Faced with the prospect of only being on the pontoon in Les Sables d’Olonne (western France) in November 2024 to greet the departure of his companion Tanguy Le Turquais, whose own Vendée Globe project has not been disrupted by the birth of their daughter, Clarisse Crémer took up the pen.
“There was clearly a desire to spark debate,” explained in an interview with AFP the graduate of the famous HEC business school, who had embarked on sailing thanks to the support of a small community gathered on social networks.
lively controversy
Objective achieved: despite the embarrassed silence of a large part of the still very masculine world of skippers, the controversy was so lively that Banque Populaire, a recognized partner in the world of sailing, quickly threw in the towel.
Clarisse Crémer, for her part, remained silent. On the one hand “so as not to focus the debate on (her) person” and on the other hand because she very quickly invested herself full-time in a new project.
First, Alex Thomson called her. This 49-year-old British sailor, who embarked on team management after five participations in the Vendée Globe, bought the Imoca in March, which the French banking group had acquired last year for Clarisse Crémer.
Then contact was made with L’Occitane, who had accompanied the French sailor Armel Tripon, 11th in the last Vendée Globe.
“Equality between men and women and the development of female leadership are very important values for us,” assured AFP Adrien Geiger, general manager of the cosmetics company.
“We embarked on this story saying that Clarisse had to do the Vendée Globe,” he added, referring to the four-month parental leave he himself took last year. .
“Let it be possible”
“These were the three cornerstones of the project: a team, a boat, a sponsor”, declared the sailor, who now intends to embark on a “race against time” to chain the miles necessary for her selection.
On this point, the race management, which seemed intransigent in February, softened its speech, suggesting that everything would be done to allow Clarisse Crémer to take the start and above all promising to revise its rules for the 2028 edition.
Aware of having become a symbol, the Frenchwoman is determined to take advantage of her media coverage to advance the debate on motherhood over the next few years.
“Parenthood does not have the same consequence on a career, in particular sports, for a man and for a woman”, she recalled. “We are not asking for everything to be the same, we are asking for it to be possible, for motherhood not to be a crippling brake”.
But for now, she says she’s “focused on the sport” and can’t wait to get back to sailing. His foiling sailboat, still under construction, must be relaunched in June and the first race is scheduled for July.
On this boat, the French skipper Charlie Dalin won the Transat Jacques Vabre in 2019 and finished second in the last Vendée Globe. “It’s a great tool, super reliable,” said the competitor who intends to make her daughter proud by “annoying the best”.
With AFP
