By Luke Hurson
“It would be the equivalent to winning an Olympic gold medal in what we do.”
Irish skipper Tom Dolan became only the third non-French sailor to win the ‘Solitaire du Figaro’, one world’s most prestigious yacht races on September 12.
Image credit: La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec Instagram
La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec is renowned as the toughest single handed multistage offshore sailing race in the world, with the finish positions for the race calculated on cumulative time.
“Three legs they call them, so three separate races between six and seven-hundred miles. We leave on a Sunday and get in on a Thursday, so we’re at sea for four days on our own and then we try to rest and recover as much as we can and then we go again the following Sunday. We do that for three weeks straight,” Dolan said.
The Mullagh man secured victory on the 55th edition of the race aboard his boat, the ‘Smurfit Kappa-Kingspan’. He finished ninth in the first of two stages but went on to win the second 515-mile stage and then finished 7th in the third and final stage but had already done enough to clinch the overall lead.
Dolan grew up on a farm in Mullagh, on the border of Meath and Cavan where he developed a keen interest in boats from a young age.
“When I was young, I used to love pirate movies, I used to make boats out of cardboard boxes,” he said. Dolan explained that this caught his father’s attention, and so they decided to buy a boat.
“We went up to Boyle in Roscommon and bought this little wooden boat. We used to go out on Lough Ramor in Cavan and float about a bit, I suppose that’s how I got the taste for it.”
He stopped sailing during his teenage years as his friends were more interested in football than boats. Despite this, whenever he sailed, he felt it always came naturally to him.
“My mother sent me to Dublin on a holiday for a week and I went to a sailing school out in Dún Laoghaire, I remember being good at it,” he said.
The 37-year-old first heard about La Solitaire when working for a boat racing association called Glenans in Cork.
“There used to be a lot of French volunteers that would come over and work during the summer. A buddy of mine started telling me about this race that he was going to try to do when he went back to France and he started showing me videos on YouTube. I remember thinking that ‘this is mad’, and ‘how do the skippers do all of this stuff on their own especially for so long?” he said.
Image credit: Tom Dolan Skipper Instagram
He decided to move to Concarneau, France in 2011 due to the lack of accessibility for sailing in Ireland.
“I wanted to learn more about boats and sailing. I wanted to be a technician on sailing boats. I never thought I’d end up being a skipper and definitely never thought I’d end up winning it, (La Solitaire). I first landed in France 12 years ago, so I’ve spent a third of my life there almost,” Dolan said.
The multiple stage race is an extremely challenging task. “It’s very intense because the level is so high and all the boats are the same, so there is always someone beside you. You’re continuously competing and you’ve no help. If you hurt yourself, you’ve got to patch yourself up, there’s no manager on the sidelines or substitutions, you’re completely on your own,” he said.
After spending so much time by himself, Dolan finds the return after the race a shock to the system.
“When you get in, there’s all these cameras and people throwing champagne and it’s a bit of a shock. You miss being on your own actually.”
Time is still needed for Dolan to fully process his big win. “It’s a bit weird, devoting 12 years of your life to something and now it’s done, I have to take it in and enjoy the moment for a bit.”
He hopes to return to Ireland for a trip to visit family in the near future.
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