At the end it was a close and long duel between French team Benjamin Schwartz and Marie Riou against Íker Martínez and Natalia Via-Dufresne (ESP) with the French finally on top. “It was a hard and complicated race where we made some risky choices that turned out to be some bad ones and some good ones” was the first feedback from Benjamin Schwartz. The French took the lead from the Spanish team during the last night with a risky decision to sail away from the leading boat and the rest of the fleet. “In the morning we found ourselves at the top of the fleet from where we controlled the race for the last few miles back to Genoa,” explained Marie Riou.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the Spanish team who crossed the finishing line on second place after leading for so many hours. It was up to the Belgian team Jonas Gerckens and Sophie Faguet to claim silver around 80 minutes after the French gold medalists. Third and with a slight bitter taste in their mouths, the Spanish team Martínez and Via-Dufresne cut the line at 10:52 a.m., returning from a remarkable performance as they maintained the lead of the race until just a few hours before the finish and dictated the pace to the entire fleet for almost the entire race. Just a few minutes after the Iberian crew, the Italian team Claudia Rossi and Matteo Mason finished a long race in pursuit of the first three. They tried and never gave up by sailing an excellent race, especially since they were making their debut on the L30.

Just how strong the teams were is shown by the fact that even the 7th team crossed the finish line within 4 hours of the winners; only one team could not finish.

Final results:

1. Team FRA   65h 46min 37sec
2. Team BEL   +1h 19min 19sec
3. Team ESP   +1h 31min 39sec
4. Team ITA   +1h 41min 47sec
5. Team GER  +2h 28min 31sec
6. Team NED  +2h 39min 36sec
7. Team GBR  +4h 09min 49sec
8. Team IRL    DNF
9. Team MON  DNS