SPORT’S VALUE: NERVE

Do you see nerve as a quality or a flaw?

For me, nerve is a quality, especially as you need a certain amount of it to set up a Vendée Globe project.

“Forget that you haven’t got a chance, just go for it. You never know when a misunderstanding might come up”, a mythical phrase from French cinema (I hope you have the ref). Aside from the irony, I love the idea of believing in your dreams, against all odds.

If there’s one time in my life when I’ve shown my nerve, it was in 2016, when I bought my first IMOCA, to line up for the start of the Vendée Globe that same year, when I had neither funding nor a partner. In fact, when I broke the news to Laurent Defrance, he said, “You’re crazy to have done that”. And yet…

What followed was a frantic search for partners to support us in this… cheeky project, which ended on the Vendée Globe finish line on February 24, 2017! Moral of the story, have some nerve!