Volvo Ocean Race - Time to suit up, boot up and do it all over again

by Dongfeng Race Team on 19 Nov 2014 With very little time off and a few broken bodies [but now repaired – read below the story about how Pascal Bidégorry sailed most of leg 1 with four vertebrae with compression fractures], there are now less than 24 hours to go until the start of the 6,125 nautical mile second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race and it’s time for Charles and his team to suit up, boot up and do it all over again.

The Volvo Ocean Race is known for its unpredictability as every leg holds something different and from dodging fishing nets off Africa, to crossing the Doldrums and then a few days in the Southern Ocean – it’s time for leg 2 from Cape Town to Abu Dhabi.

'The fleet will most likely encounter the same problems going out of Cape Town as coming in! The Table Mountain wind shadow will no doubt strike again and the fleet may struggle to get away from Cape Town!' Explains Dongfeng Race Team’s Technical Director, Neil Graham.

In this leg the team will cross the equator again, this time going north. Perhaps there will be a little more time for celebration this time round onboard Dongfeng compared with the frustrations that the first leg dealt to our boys! In general it’s likely to be fairly slow sailing in serious heat up to Abu Dhabi. This is possibly the most frustrating leg as light conditions and low speed is what this leg predicts. However, having said that, recent forecasts are suggesting that there could be a tropical cyclone in the fleet’s path.

As the fleet sail through the Maldives and past the oil rigs it can be an exciting time at the end of leg two as the team’s performance levels start to show. The final passage is through the Straits of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, and into the UAE waters in the Gulf.

'I’ve been looking at the weather and now I just want to get going,' says Pascal Bidégorry, team navigator and winner of the B&G Navigators’ Prize for leg 1. 'I am happy about the prize but I would rather win the prize for the next leg, non?'Says the talented Frenchman. One constraint for the navigators is a number of exclusions zones on the course put in place by the race to ensure teams don’t end up in higher piracy risk areas – an unconstrained weather routing today would take the flight right up the east coast of Africa, to the west of Madagascar even – but the rules rightly don’t permit it.

The significant difference for Dongfeng Race Team in leg 2 will be the recent crew change: 'Chinese sailor Liu Xue (Black) will be replacing Yang Jiru (Wolf) for leg 2,' explains Skipper Charles Caudrelier. 'It’s maybe a compromise on performance to have a crew change just as Wolf was gaining in experience, but this is pre-planned, it’s part of our mission as a project to develop as many Chinese sailors as we can during the race.'

Mending broken bodies to be ‘race fit’ once more

By Ed Gorman, former sailing correspondent The Times

The story of Pascal Bidégorry….

The Volvo Ocean Race makes extraordinary demands on the bodies of the sailors in the Dongfeng Race Team.

In strong conditions out on the ocean, the Chinese Volvo Ocean 65 becomes a violently unstable platform as it ploughs through big seas at high speed.

In an instant, sailors can suffer serious and traumatic injuries if they lose their balance or their footing and find themselves being thrown across the boat.

This is exactly what happened to the Dongfeng team navigator, Pascal Bidégorry, who was in the cabin when the bright red Chinese racing machine hit a big wave at the end of the first week at sea on leg one from Alicante to Cape Town.

The impact sent Bidégorry flying across the cabin and it was his neck that took the full force of the impact when he landed.

A tough and taciturn Frenchman with huge offshore experience, Bidégorry knew immediately that he had suffered serious injury.

The team quickly put in place emergency procedures to assess the extent of his injury. Had he suffered fractures to his neck and was there a danger that his spinal cord could be damaged? Could he continue in the race or have to be taken off the boat, a potential disaster for the campaign?

The task of working out how badly Bidégorry had been hurt fell to the Chamonix-based Dongfeng team sports physiotherapist and sports science expert, Neil Maclean-Martin. He spent hours on the satellite phone to the boat, from his clinic in the French Alps, carefully analysing Bidégorry symptoms before coming to the conclusion that the Dongfeng navigator had suffered compression fractures that were unlikely to threaten his spinal column.

But this is not to downplay the extent of his injury. Whatever the diagnosis, it was going to be hard to continue and it is no exaggeration to say that Bidégorry reached Cape Town three weeks later with a broken body. The pain and damage from the injury had caused almost continual spasm in his muscles from head to toe and it was Maclean-Martin’s job to fix him in time for leg two to Abu Dhabi that starts from Cape Town tomorrow (Wednesday, 19th November).

After an MRI scan confirmed his earlier diagnosis – Bidégorry had compression fractures in four vertebrae in his neck – Maclean-Martin got to work trying to coax the Frenchman’s body back out of its crisis state. For a week at the team base in Cape Town he worked, three hours each day, helping Bidégorry overcome his injury. And the results have been dramatic. Bidégorry sums it up: 'If it was not for Neil, I would not be able to set sail tomorrow – there is no doubt about that,' he said.

Maclean-Martin says Bidégorry body had reacted like someone who had been in a big car crash. 'We had to work right from the feet upwards, through the calves, the thighs, the hips and then do lots of work on the lower back,' he said. 'Three weeks in pain is a long time so Pascal had been continually bracing his body and we had to unwind all that tension.' He had to be extremely careful as he manipulated Bidégorry neck after such a serious injury. 'I had to bring my A-game to it,' he said.

Maclean-Martin has been hugely impressed by his patient’s swift recovery, something he puts down to Bidégorry general fitness and toughness. 'There was a best-case scenario in terms of outcomes and, above that an aspirational one, and that’s where we are,' he said.

Bidégorry was not the only injured sailor in the Dongfeng racing team after leg one of the Volvo Ocean Race in which the Chinese entry, skippered by Charles Caudrelier, finished in an impressive second place behind Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing.

His fellow countryman Thomas Rouxel reached South Africa with suspected cracked ribs that needed Maclean-Martin’s attention, and almost all the crew showed signs of muscle tears and other stresses in their shoulders, forearms and wrists – the parts of their bodies that were worked hardest during 25 days of continuous sail trimming and sail changing.

Crew List for Leg 2

Charles Caudrelier (Skipper)
Pascal Bidégorry (Navigator)
Martin Strömberg (Pit and Trimmer)
Thomas Rouxel (Trimmer)
Kévin Escoffier (Bowman)
Eric Peron (Trimmer)
‘Horace’ Chen Jin Hao (Bowman)
‘Black’ Liu Xue (Pit)
Yann Riou (Onboard Reporter)

For more detailed information about the crew, click here.