Corentin Horeau has claimed the biggest win of his career, taking victory in the Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe aboard his IMOCA MACSF. For the sailor from La Trinité-sur-Mer, it caps a rapid rise built on talent, graft, and an unmistakable refusal to back down.
The win was built on a single decisive move mid-course, a bold gybe that blew the IMOCA fleet wide open on 2 November and left his rivals stranded while he sailed into a lead nobody could claw back. By the finish, that gamble had turned into a landslide, with Horeau smashing the IMOCA race record on his way into Pointe-à-Pitre.
Before this week's arrival, Horeau had already fulfilled one dream: winning the Solitaire du Figaro, back in September 2023. That victory came by just over an hour, sealed in the small port of Piriac-sur-Mer in Loire-Atlantique. He had to rein himself in that day, sailing cautiously to protect his lead. "I didn't want to mess that one up, I sailed like an accountant," he said at the finish.
Three years on, in an unforgiving Route du Rhum, there was no need to hold back. Horeau won this one by attacking, by sailing boldly, and that approach says plenty about who he is.
Élodie Bonafous, who raced a doublehanded Transat with him in 2021, finishing seventh, calls him a "very good mate". "He's a really lovely guy," she says. "But at sea he becomes an animal, someone with real fight, who wants to win, who's extremely motivated and who always pushes himself further."
Baptiste Hulin, sailing the Ocean Fifty Viabilis Oceans, watched the MACSF rocket close in on him in recent days. The pair know each other well, having raced together in the Route des Terres-Neuvas transatlantic in summer 2024, finishing second. "When Corentin arrived, he threw himself into the project as if it were his own," Hulin recalls, pointing to his "ability to never give up" and "give everything for performance". "He's always flat out but he's also someone who's always in a good mood and loves a laugh."
Yoann Richomme, who sailed with him last year, agrees: "He's funny, friendly, always in good spirits, and he's got a positive energy that rubs off on everyone."
Offshore racing was always going to be Horeau's path. His father, Michel, raced the Whitbread in 1977-1978 and worked with offshore teams including Laurent Bourgnon's. His mother raced aboard Gauloises III, a legendary 20-metre sloop. His uncle, Denis Horeau, was a respected race director, including at the Vendée Globe and the Solitaire du Figaro.
Growing up in La Trinité-sur-Mer meant the pontoon atmosphere and "the big trimarans I could see from my window" were simply part of the backdrop. "I was immersed in offshore racing from the youngest age," he says. His teenage bedroom walls carried posters of sailors he idolised, among them Alain Gautier, Franck Cammas and Loïck Peyron.
Football and sailing ran side by side in his youth, lunchtime matches played flat out, "driving the teacher mad because we turned up sweating for his 2pm class". He later trained as a ship's officer in Saint-Malo before working his way up through the Figaro circuit, following in the footsteps of François Gabart and Anthony Marchand, and racing against the likes of Jérémie Beyou, Yann Eliès and Charlie Dalin.
Horeau never rushed the ladder. He spent a year alongside Richomme learning the ropes of the former Paprec Arkéa before taking the reins of MACSF's new IMOCA project this year. "In a team he's a superb asset, a brilliant personality, someone who adapts really well," Richomme says, calling it "a lovely story of handover" at MACSF.
The pair finished second in The Ocean Race Europe last year. Despite the effort, IMOCA success had eluded Horeau until now: a buoy collision at the start of last year's Transat Café L'Or, then a torn-out chainplate that forced his retirement from the Vendée Arctique in June.
This time, at last, it all came together, and his victory came in the same Guadeloupe arrival window that saw Basile Bourgnon, 24, smash the Ocean Fifty class record to honour his father's legacy.
