Saint-Malo is drawing crowds again, and the numbers are starting to look familiar.
Since the village reopened last Saturday, the public has packed its lanes in ever greater numbers, proof of how much France loves the Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe, and of a sport that still captures imaginations the way it always has.
Go back to 5 November 1978. As the thirty-eight competitors in the very first Route du Rhum prepared to leave Saint-Malo, thousands descended on the old corsair town to send them off. Witnesses and media at the time reported traffic queues stretching more than 50 kilometres around the city.
Forty-eight years on, there are now 115 skippers. The boats have become floating technology showcases, some capable of crossing the Atlantic in under seven days. But the passion hasn't changed a bit.
Coming off a record 2022 edition that drew close to 1.5 million spectators to the village, this year's race looks set to be just as popular. Storm Austen threw a spanner in the works, giving organisers and everyone involved some anxious moments. But careful planning, solidarity and mutual support between all parties got everyone through it without major disruption.
Now the crowd is well and truly back: massive, cheerful, and wonderfully mixed.
The village reopened on Saturday at midday, putting an end to those empty lanes and the whistle of wind through rigging with nobody around to hear it. People push through showers, as they did on Saturday. They huddle together for warmth, as they did on Sunday evening at the skipper presentation. They queue patiently when the lanes get crowded and the stands fill up. They leave with posters, pamphlets, free giveaways, and smiles too, sheltering under raincoats and anoraks, hoods and umbrellas: families, young children, teenagers, retirees.
Visitors try to get their heads around the local jargon, the boat sizes and classes, Ultim, IMOCA, Class40, and try to grasp just what it takes for one person to handle a boat solo in all weathers. They repeat the skippers' names to each other, the home heroes, imagining the scale of what lies ahead for them. Charles Caudrelier, Armel Le Cléac'h, Thomas Coville, Guirec Soudée, Violette Dorange. These aren't just names from the papers or social media any more.
They are flesh-and-blood athletes about to take on an extraordinary challenge once again. In the hearts of the crowd, though, they're something more than that: modest heroes for modern times.
