With less than ten miles to the finish line in Gijón, Spain the leaders have been slowed in the final approaches. Lois Berrehar (Skipper MACIF 2022) has stolen the lead from the long time pacemaker Alexis Loison (GROUPE REEL) who earlier this morning had more than five miles in hand over his nearest pursuer. And so it looks like a nervous, painstaking finish to this marathon 615 miles stage from Le Havre.
Loison is about two miles behind and closer to the rhumb line. Berrehar is on even terms with Basil Bourgnon (EDENRED) who is judged to be second. Ireland’s Tom Dolan (Smurfit Kappa-Kingpsan) is in the main group even if he has dropped from third place he held overnight, right now his main focus is finishing within as short a time as possible after the winner and really staying with this group. A top placing would be nice but this event is scored on overall elapsed time so the smallest deltas as possible is more important. Spain's Pep Costa (VSF Sports) is half a mile behind in 11th.
A couple of hours ago he said “I’m at full speed under spinnaker at 13, 14 knots, it's going fast. I'm side by side with Gaston Morvan and Victor Le Pape, the two sailors from Région Bretagne - CMB, it's a hard battle. We're going to try to catch up a bit with those in front but it's not going to be easy. I don't know where they went. There are 60 miles left, it's going to go quickly. We have to hang on tight. I didn't rest much yesterday. It was very variable in intensity, lots of maneuvers, not conducive to recovering a bit. We have to go straight ahead, but it'll work. The sea is great for accelerating, I hope it stays like that, not any harder otherwise it's going to get complicated,"
In Le Défi Paprec Britain’s Ellie Driver and David Paul (Chilli Pepper) are scrapping over second place against the French duo Isabelle Delaporte and veteran Sidney Gavignet (L’Arche en France)