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Damien Seguin at the Vendee Globe 2020: »I wanted to do that too«
Photo:
FRED TANNEAU / AFP
“I don't know if I'm a role model.
But I want to show what you can achieve, «says Damien Seguin.
The 41-year-old is a five-time world champion in his boat class.
One could take for granted that the Frenchman will start at the Vendée Globe, the most challenging solo regatta around the world with the best of the best.
But Seguin's story is special.
He was born without a left hand.
So far, he has achieved international success in Paralympic sport.
At this year's edition of the Vendée Globe, at which the first sailors are expected to return this Wednesday after almost eighty days at sea in Les Sables d'Olonne, he is the first skipper with a disability in over thirty years of Vendée history.
If nothing else comes up, he will finish the regatta in the top group.
The 2004 and 2016 Paralympics winner himself did not think that was possible.
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Seguin shortly after starting the Vendée Globe
Photo:
Alexis Courcoux / imago images / PanoramiC
Even if it was his goal: to show what you can achieve.
"Then other parents can tell their children with disabilities: We know it can be done," he said in an interview on the organizer's website before the start in November.
At this point in time, his goal was "just get there": to show that he can master storms, waves and other adversities that can endanger his life just as well as the other skippers without disabilities.
After all, his own parents never explained boundaries to him, he says.
Even when they of course bought him shoes with laces instead of Velcro, despite his limitations, he learned that with more effort he could achieve everything that others can do without limitation.
He took it with him all his life.
He says: "With passion you can overcome all supposed limits."
Seguin grew up between the Côte d'Azur and the highest mountains in the Western Alps.
When he was about ten years old, the family moved to the Caribbean.
The first contact with sailing came about in Guadeloupe.
In 1990 Seguin watched the finish of the Regatta Route du Rhum.
He recalls, “I didn't know anything about it, but everyone was talking about it.
It was like a revelation.
These gigantic boats, the sailors who asked for autographs, how rock stars were celebrated.
I wanted to do that too. "
He signs up for the sailing course.
At the age of 13 he competed in his first competitions.
After finishing school, he first started studying biology, but dropped out.
He changes to the national sailing academy of France in Lorient and completes a sports teacher training.
He takes part in four Paralympics, wins gold and silver.
However, after the games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, sailing will be taken off the program.
Seguin decides to go all out to sea sailing.
He starts at the Route du Rhum, the Vendée-Arctique and other regattas - and now the biggest challenge for solo sailors, the Vendée Globe.
So far, he has been most proud of his "Olympic adventure," he says.
"I experienced a unique atmosphere there, and special human stories." In particular, his role as the flag bearer of France in London 2012 would have given him an "enormous boost".
In the past few weeks he has written and filmed over and over again about the emotions that triggered the fulfillment of his childhood dreams.
And also the extreme situations: winds with strong storms and high seas through all climatic zones, also almost three months of solitude.
With the Vendée, Seguin set out to show that a person with a disability can compete with the best without disabilities.
He found his own less a restriction than an incentive and mandate.
In France he also started a project to promote inclusion in water sports.
He himself names the resilience that he draws from his life experience as his greatest quality.
It comes into its own, he says, when it comes to such a challenge as sailing around the world.
Seguin hardly made any changes to the boat because of his handicap.
Only the so-called "coffee grinder", the winch column, with the help of which sails are hoisted, recovered and adjusted, has a sleeve for a hand prosthesis so that the left arm can also be used.
The rest is the same as with the other skippers: the yachts of the Imoca boat class are the same in structure, all around 18 meters long and around eight tons in weight.
The skippers are now alone at sea for 77 days.
Seguin has been sailing in the top group for weeks.
At the beginning of January he was even in second place.
He is the only one in front to sail without foils - those wings that accelerate the yachts and make them fly.
But Seguin's boat is old, born in 2008, and his Vendée campaign is sponsored by a health insurance company with a relatively low budget.
Upgrading with foils costs an estimated half a million euros.
Seguin was able to keep up for a long time.
His boat has not sustained any major damage on the 48,000-kilometer circumnavigation of the world, while others failed with broken rudder, keel and mast, whale collision and other incidents.
But now the foilers are accelerating up the Atlantic for the last thousand kilometers.
Seguin has fallen back a little.
He had bad luck with the wind, difficult days cost him the route.
Before the start he had hoped to simply arrive.
Now he could probably finish as the best non-foiler and among the top six.
And Seguin has not yet given up the top positions.
He wrote on Twitter: “I enjoy attacking.
I will attack to the end. "
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