Alexia Barrier will become the first woman to race in the ULTIM class when she lines up for the Route du Rhum, sailing the famous red trimaran that has already won the race three times under different skippers. She takes the start in Saint-Malo aboard IDEC SPORT-CIC, the boat previously campaigned by Francis Joyon, Loïck Peyron and Franck Cammas.
Barrier's path to ocean racing's biggest multihull class started a long way from Brittany. Her first sailing memory is from Antibes, aboard a 6-metre yacht shared by her father and a colleague.
"My first sailing memory was in Antibes, with my father, on our 6-metre yacht," she said. "I must have been three and a half, and it immediately awakened a feeling of freedom, fascination, and creativity too. That's where I realised the sea would be part of my life."
She didn't head straight into dinghy sailing. Basketball and horse riding came first, then a return to sailing at 14 in a laser, before match racing opened the door to the offshore circuit: Mini-Transat, Figaro, then IMOCA. The Vendée Globe was always the dream, she says, and multihulls once felt out of reach.
That changed after she completed her Vendée Globe in 2021. By February 2022 she'd called long-time collaborator Anne Millet to announce she wouldn't do another Vendée Globe. ULTIM sailing was next.
In January this year, skippering her all-female crew The Famous Project, Barrier set the women's crewed round-the-world sailing record. Adapting that boat to solo racing hasn't been simple.
"It's quite fascinating, even though it's the same boat, it's not the same," she said. "It remains a twin-cockpit multihull that will always require more movement solo than my competitors, but we're trying to adapt, I've made it my own."
Loïck Peyron and Jean-Baptiste Le Vaillant sailed with her over the summer to help with that transition.
On being the first woman in the ULTIM fleet, Barrier is matter-of-fact rather than triumphant.
"I take that seriously because, whether I like it or not, I have a role model status of sorts," she said. "But I also find it a shame that it's 2026 and I'm this 'first woman'. My ambition is for this question to become ordinary, and for a woman at the helm of an ULTIM to no longer be an exception."
She's realistic about outright pace against the fleet's newest designs, but says she won't just be making up the numbers.
"I'm not just going there to start the race and be the first woman in ULTIM class history," she said. "I know my level very well, and my boat's level compared to other competitors, but I'm going to give myself the chance to make the most of the boat's potential and my own abilities to finish as high as possible. I'm a competitor."
The Route du Rhum is one leg of a three-year plan for The Famous Project, building toward the Arkea Ultim Challenge and a fully female Jules Verne Trophy attempt.
