Ocean Fifty: Primonial wins ahead of Koesio and Viabilis Oceans

News, Spotlight, Ocean Fifty

At the end of the day on Thursday 3rd October, after four days of racing and a few spray drifts between Port-Camargue and Saïdia, it was a fantastic ride that sealed victory in the Ocean Fifty on this MED MAX Occitanie - Saïdia Resorts. After a hard-fought battle on a course strewn with pitfalls, dreamy landscapes, good poker tricks and less successful options, Primonial, led by Sébastien Rogues and Jean-Baptiste Gellée won out over her runner-up, Koesio, led by Erwan Le Roux and Pablo Santurde del Arco, who arrived 1h 23min 08s later in the light airs off the Moroccan coast. " I'm delighted to have successfully completed a difficult race in the Mediterranean, with all its mysteries and magical places. With JB (Gellée), we won it by getting back to the right way round after starting out upside down. The course is incredibly beautiful. The MedMax is going to be a great race. And I'm very proud to have had the honour of being the first to cross the line. It's historic".

An hour and a half later, it was "Koesio"'s turn to cross the line with a last breath. Erwan Le Roux addressed Kito: " Well, that's what you had to do before! He invented it, Kito did it!. Before going on to talk about the leadership that eluded him at the end: "Each time we were in the right frame of mind, we showed confidence because everything was going our way. Primonial were able to bounce back from their bad patch, they went looking for something, came back and won. Nothing to regret. Just appreciate the welcome, worthy of a fine ocean race".

I'm delighted to have successfully completed a difficult race in the Mediterranean, with all its mysteries and magical places. With JB (Gellée), we won it by getting back to the right way round after starting out upside down. The course is incredibly beautiful. The MedMax is going to be a great race. And I'm very proud to have had the honour of being the first to cross the line. It's historic!

Third at 4h29'48" from the frontrunner, after fighting like the devil in a trio that gave nothing away, Baptiste Hulin, on "Viabilis", supported by Thomas Rouxel, who was right at home on a multihull, savoured his podium finish. " After five sick days and a complicated final day, we're savouring it. At the end, with Realite and Le Rire Médecin, it was almost a match-racing match. In fact, we were still behind them at the start of the afternoon. We gave it everything we had, building up speed and confidence. And that was it. This MedMax is a fabulous race, testing but fabulous. ". It was time to go and enjoy a mint tea, like Luke Berry and Antoine Jouert (Le Rire Médecin) and Fabrice Cahierc-Aymeric Chappellier (Realites), who arrived in the wake of the race, in a fiery atmosphere, as the Moroccans had promised. "Solidaires en peloton (Thibaut Vauchel-Camus - Yann Eliès), Upwind by MerConcept (Anne-Claire Le Berre - Elodie-Jane Mettraux), InterInvest (Mathieu Perraut - Kevin Bloch) and Mon Bonnet Rose (Laurent Bourguès-Clément Giraud) arrived later in the mild Moroccan night.