Ambrogio Beccaria has built his offshore sailing career on a simple but demanding principle: master each level of the sport before attempting the next. The Milan-born nautical engineer, now 34, has little interest in the trappings of fame. What he pursues instead is methodical excellence, and the results are difficult to argue with. His current project, sailing the foiling IMOCA 60 Allagrande Mapei, is pointed squarely at the 2028 Vendée Globe, with the Vendée Arctique 2026 earmarked as a vital test for both boat and skipper along the way.
The statistics behind Beccaria's career tell their own story. From 29 regattas, he has collected 23 podiums and 17 victories, a strike rate that reflects thorough preparation rather than fortune. The moment that announced him to the wider offshore world came in 2019, when he became the first Italian to win the Mini Transat, a breakthrough that opened doors quickly. Consecutive TAG Heuer Sailor of the Year awards followed, along with the Ambrogino d'Oro, one of Milan's most prestigious civic honours.
His time racing the Class40 Alla Grande Pirelli reinforced everything the Mini Transat had suggested. A second place in the 2022 Route du Rhum gave way to outright victories in the 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre and the 2024 Transat CIC. These are not the results of a sailor who gambles on weather or pushes machinery past its limits and hopes for the best. They are the results of someone who reads conditions with discipline, understands his boat at a mechanical level, and accepts without frustration what each moment of a race will and will not allow.
The move into IMOCA has been approached with the same considered care. Allagrande Mapei is a 2022 foiler designed by Antoine Koch, a platform with an established competitive record and room for further development. The campaign is backed by Mapei, the Milan-based building-materials company, whose organisational scale and corporate rigour give the project a structured character that mirrors Beccaria's own approach. This is not a campaign running on ambition alone.
{{TABLE_1}}
Those who follow Southern Ocean racing will find Beccaria's outlook familiar. There is no talk of dramatic reinvention here, only systems thinking, incremental gains, and the unglamorous discipline of turning a competitive boat into a dependable one when the conditions turn severe. The Vendée Arctique 2026 will put both Allagrande Mapei and her skipper under precisely that kind of pressure, and for Beccaria it represents one more carefully measured step on the road to Le Défi in 2028.
