Clarisse Crémer: "I want to be able to put the foot on the gas a bit more and be more confident this time."

I would say I’m pretty happy and in a positive state of mind, quite excited to go. Of course, I have a little shadow of stress and a slight feeling of "what have I gotten myself into again", but I am feeling good.

It was at the Cape of Good Hope on my first Vendée Globe. It's often said this race is very addictive. It's very surprising and quite hard to explain with words, but it's like an unknown planet, a world apart where you experience a thousand crazy emotions. You are at the Cape of Good Hope after three weeks at sea a duration that we don’t often experience at sea because transatlantic crossings are shorter. And that's when I understood that I would have to go back. It is like a country that you discover and where you immediately say to yourself "now, I'm really going to have to come back, to understand it all better". Except that the new place that you're visiting is yourself. Yes, it's a bit crazy all the same (laughs).

Yes for what is inside me. In fact, there are lots of phases in a Vendée Globe, it's really long. From the outside, it's hard to realize it, but for us at sea, over each 24-hour day, a billion things happen. You can go from feeling like you're in the deep end to the purest joy that would make you look like a complete mad person on land. I want to feel these moments of joy, but also to experience the ups and downs better than last time. To have the lows not be so profound. And in terms of sport, I would like to put my foot down a little more, to be more confident.

So much has happened in four years, sometimes I feel like it's been a whole other life! Last time, the opportunity fell into my lap a bit, and even though it was an immense stroke of luck for which I am still grateful, I think I was in a bit of a daze, I didn't quite realise what was happening. Plus, there was Covid, it was a weird time, and when I think about it I feel like I was in a bit of a black hole, overwhelmed by everything it represented. Before the start, I was extremely curious and excited, and at the same time I felt like there was a countdown taking me who knows where!. Honestly, I returned to Les Sables d’Olonne some three days before the start, a bit like a zombie. I think that then played tricks on me in the first few days of my last Vendée Globe. This time, and even more so with everything that's happened, I have been the driving force behind this project, and I'm going back to it fully conscious, so it's very different Vendée Globe.

Heavy, tedious, burdensome and all the adjectives you can think of like that! There was a first ordeal with the loss of my sponsor following my pregnancy, and the big media blow that followed. Then the start of the project with L'Occitane en Provence, which obviously required a lot of energy, at the time when I was also learning about the joys of motherhood. And then after that the whole qualification process was super difficult, I felt a crazy amount of pressure. And in January, when I started to get my head above water a little, to feel better in my body too, because my daughter was a little over a year old, that's when the anonymous accusations of cheating in the last Vendée Globe arrived (editor's note: Clarisse Crémer and her husband, Tanguy Le Turquais, were cleared of any "misconduct" by an international jury). I would never have imagined this, this aggravation. Unfortunately, the stories are completely linked, there are people who didn't want me to be at the start of the Vendée Globe, but I'm trying to put that behind me. It's just racing the boat, you have to put things into perspective.

One of my dreams at the end of my first Vendée Globe was to have more time to prepare, and to be less affected by the intensity of the calendar. Last time, I had a very short project, less than a year and a half, and this time it was exactly the same. So that was clearly never the plan. It's the same for the boat, we didn't have time to undertake the modifications that we could have imagined to allow me to perform better. And then, personally, I expended too much energy on things other than the sporting aspect, it was hard. So no, everything is not as I dreamed, but at the same time I have made my peace with it all.

Of course, I had the opportunity to stop everything several times (laughs)! But if I fought so much, it's because I wanted to be here! There is a kind of relief to start on the water and soon only have the problems of a skipper going racing, even if they are complicated to manage obviously. But I'm leaving to go racing because that's what I like to do. In a way, all these stories have allowed me to solidify the reasons why I'm leaving. And it's the first time in a long time that I'm going to be able to sail with a psychological state equal to the others, that is to say without the pressure of "I absolutely have to finish otherwise I won't be at the start of the Vendée Globe."

As an athlete, we don't set out to save the world, but we can send a message. I have always said that our only added value for a company that supports us all about values and inspiration. So yes, if my story can help change mentalities on such important subjects, so much the better.

Not as much as I would have liked because once again there was this pressure to qualify, and we also had the breakage on The Transat CIC (crack in a structural bulkhead which forced a technical stopover in the Azores, editor's note). I wavered a lot between putting my foot on the brake to get there and wanting to push myself. But I want to do better than last time, to set the cursor higher, to have a good course and to fight with boats of my generation. To make a top 10, that would be great.

One of my best memories, it's maybe a bit weird, but it's four hours after breaking down on The Transat CIC. When I saw that I was coping well, that the race was disappointing but that I was still happy to be there, to rediscover the joy of being at sea. And then, for the competition side, the start of the New York-Vendée where I was pretty much in the game, and it was pretty cool this feeling of racing with an IMOCA.

It's definitely such a big thing! What's great is that we're the second couple to experience this (after Samantha Davies and Romain Attanasio, with their son Ruben, editor's note), and that we were able to share our experiences! Obviously, I have a big fear, that something will happen to her while we are at sea, but that is part of the worry of being a parent and it is not necessarily different on land! But generally speaking, when I am on the water, my daughter is an inspiration, a driving motivation. I think of her, and I know exactly why I am doing all this.