Ambrogio Beccaria crossed the finish line of the Vendée Arctique knowing he’d earned every metre of his victory. The Italian skipper on Allagrande Mapei survived one of the most chaotic race finales in memory, a gruelling overnight battle that dragged from Monday evening into Tuesday morning and left two rivals within striking distance until the final hours.
The drama played out in the windless expanse of the Bay of Biscay. Meteorologists had warned early in the week that a sprawling dead zone would shape this race’s outcome. It wasn’t just a matter of calm conditions — Goodchild on MACIF Santé Prévoyance hit the wall first, becalmed and watching helplessly as Beccaria and Violette Dorange on Initiatives-Cœur clawed their way back into contention. Race director Alan Roberts had predicted it plainly: Goodchild would be the first trapped in the doldrums, and the others would claw back to him.
Eloi Stichelbaut – polaRYSE / Nefsea, Elodie Guillouet – polaRYSE / Nefsea
SAEM Vendée, À usage rédactionnel uniquement | Vendée Arctique 2026
He was right. What unfolded was less a race than an endurance test. For those watching onshore, the wait stretched agonisingly from late afternoon Monday into the small hours of Tuesday morning. Three sailors drifting in the Vendée approaches had no choice but to hold nerve and keep fighting when every instinct said to surrender to the flat sea.
Dorange came tantalisingly close. She had the tools and the tactical positioning to win. Instead, Beccaria found the narrow margin between collapse and victory, the tiny wind shifts that separated first place from the second-place boat crossing somewhere in the murky Tuesday dawn. It wasn’t the decisive victory that comes from three weeks of clean racing. It was a win extracted from the Biscay with fingernails and will.
What made the finish cruel was its unpredictability. Everyone knew the doldrums were coming — the warning signs appeared on forecast files by the previous weekend. Yet knowing where the trap sits doesn’t help you escape it. Three world-class IMOCA sailors faced the same hostile conditions and came away with vastly different outcomes. That’s what separated Beccaria’s triumph from Dorange’s anguish and Goodchild’s bitter conclusion to a race he’d led decisively until the wind vanished.
For a New Zealand audience familiar with the Vendée Globe’s punishing finales, this will resonate. The Biscay can humble anyone. Beccaria’s crew, like Dorange’s, refused to surrender to it.
