Vendee Globe - Race Village in Paris-Montparnasse inaugurated

by Vendee Globe on 14 Nov 2012 In the Vendee Globe, just two days after the race village in Les Sables d’Olonne which had attracted around a million people over three weeks closed, Bruno Retailleau has inaugurated the Race HQ in Paris today, Tuesday. It will be open to the public every day for the next three months and can be found on the Tour Montparnasse esplanade.

On this special occasion, the president of the Vendée Regional Council especially wanted to pay tribute the two unlucky sailors Marc Guillemot (Safran) and Kito de Pavant (Groupe Bel) who had to retire from the race within the first few days.

'The Vendée Globe has lost two great personalities, very experienced sailors and very generous men. They have given us a lesson of life when adversity fell upon them. I would like to salute Safran who support Marc; a sailor who has written one the greatest Vendée Globe stories when he stood by Yann Eliès. As for Kito, he represents the South’s charm. We suffer with them, we are sad; something is going to be missing on the Vendée Globe'.

After the huge popular success of the Sable d’Olonne village, with around one million visitors during the three weeks it was open and more than 300 000 people in Les Sables d’Olonne on start day, the Vendée Globe Race HQ has moved to the French capital.

Today, Tuesday, Bruno Retailleau, president of the SAEM Vendée, visited the extensive Montparnasse Race HQ which has a surface area of 1000 sq meters and is comprised of Bodard modules.

Open every day during three months (radio vacations from 12.30PM to 1.15PM) the Montparnasse Race HQ is made of three main spaces:

- The radio vacations room. Open to the public from 10AM to 7PM, it can welcome up to 200 people. It has been made as a true television studio with a TV stage for five participants, a control room, etc...

- The office space which is reserved of the organisation, the Race officers, the editors of the Vendée Globe website and journalists.

- A VIP room, dedicated to the Vendée Globe sponsors, the teams and their guests.

The Montparnasse Race HQ is to open to any visitor, media and echoes the same dynamism seen in Les Sables d’Olonne, where 1,110 journalists and media technicians were present. 15% were International representatives and thirty countries were represented.

The Vendée Globe 2.0 challenge is well on its way to success. Since October 20, the website has recorded almost nine million page views (with one quarter from overseas). At the same time, videos, available in three languages, have been seen 1.7 million times on Dailymotion and Youtube. The start day live video saw 400,000 views, with 20% International viewers.

Virtual Regatta is also breaking all the records with more than 240,000 subscribers, the social networks are in a good shape too: 47.000 fans on Facebook and 13.000 followers on Twitter.

As for the smart phone app, released on November 1st, it has reached the first place of free sport app within 48 hours on the Apple Store both on Iphone and Ipad. Also available on Google Play for smart phones and Android, it has been downloaded by 85,000 persons on every format.

The race has now started and around two billion houses will be able to follow the race every day thanks to an exceptional TV broadcast gathering 65 channels in 195 countries.

The Les Sables d’Olonne village will open its doors once again on January 25, 2013, as the first Vendée Globe skippers will Vendee Globe website