At 29, Tom Laperche arrives at his first Route du Rhum as one of the outright favourites in the Ultim class, a position that owes nothing to youth and everything to results.
Four years sailing SVR-Lazartigue have settled any question of whether he belongs at the top of the fleet. He won the Solitaire du Figaro, then backed it up with victory in the Transat Café L'Or last year. Now he's preparing for Saint-Malo to Pointe-à-Pitre for the first time, his boat freshly optimised, his head clear about what needs to happen.
His connection to the race runs back to childhood. Born in 1997, his earliest memories are of the chaos-filled 2002 edition, followed through television and radio. As a boy he dreamed of racing the Rhum in an Optimist, until family friend Laurent Bourgnon gently informed him that wasn't how it worked. Watching multihulls fly flat-out across the Atlantic is what hooked him on racing in the first place.
His father raced the amateur class in 2010 aboard a 50-foot trimaran, a family project that saw young Tom helping with boat prep, provisioning and antifouling. "It was a beautiful family challenge," he says. That was his first time at the Route du Rhum village.
He's quick to defend the race's mix of amateurs and professionals. "It's hyper positive. That's why the Route du Rhum brings people together. It unites amateurs chasing the dream of a lifetime, like my father did, and skippers running very complex projects, like I am today."
On the win itself, he's measured. "We're all working towards victory, that's the goal for the whole team. But you can't only think about that. Victory is the cherry on the cake."
Since the Transat Café L'Or, the team has reworked the platform's aerodynamics and fitted new sails, a new foil and deeper rudders, all chasing height above the water to reduce wave interaction. A damaged starboard foil was swapped back to the older unit a few weeks ago. No real impact, he says, pointing out that the old foils won the Rolex Fastnet Race.
Why is the Rhum so brutal? "It's a sprint, and on these boats, to be fast you always have to be right on the edge." Adrenaline, tension, barely any rest at full speed. "Sailing these boats totally empties you."
The fleet looks tight: Armel Le Cléac'h on Maxi Banque Populaire XI, Thomas Coville on Sodebo, and Anthony Marchand aboard Actual Ultim 3. The new Maxi Edmond de Rothschild remains the unknown quantity, untested against the rest in race conditions.
Still, he keeps coming back to the feeling itself. "There's the pleasure of speed, the adrenaline rush. It's a huge source of motivation, and it's really what I come looking for every time I sail."
