Sailing: big tribute to maternity skippers

Rare mixed discipline and in search of more gender equality, the sailing is not spared by the “ultimate taboo of the pregnancy of sportsmen”, as recalled by the Clarisse navigator. p>

by Charlotte chabas

squatting the bow of her golden trimaran, Florence Arthaud has the smile of big days. We are on November 29, 1990, and the 33 -year -old navigator has just won the Route du Rhum, Grail Transatlantique of all the sailors alone. She has also just made a miscarriage at sea, but she will not entrust him until much later in her memoirs, a wind of freedom (Arthaud, 2009). In “one” from the Parisian, above the portrait of the sportswoman, this title: “Flo, you’re a real guy!”

“This sums up all the paradox of offshore racing: both a sport where women play the same game as men, but always according to the rules and values ​​enacted by and for men”, summarizes Catherine Louveau, Sociologist at the University of Paris-Saclay, specialist in the sexualization of sports practices.

Was there no progress, in this sport where, unlike many others where women are invisible, Isabelle Autissier, Catherine Chabaud or Ellen McArthur marked the general public thanks to prestigious performances? The announcement of the Navigator Clarisse Crémer, “left to the platform” in mid-February by her sponsor, Banque Populaire, because her pregnancy had delayed his race for qualification for the Vendée Globe 2024, reopened a wound still in the Small world of offshore racing.

Thus, a skipper whose sporting and communication skills are unanimously recognized – 2 e

é> of the Mini -Transat 2017, 12 e é> of the Vendée Globe 2020 and Woman The Faster around the world, Grand Prix Sports Strategies in 2021 – could not become a mother without it preventing her career? “There were two complete seasons and four transatlantics left to come back to the level, I was fully to finish my rehabilitation as soon as possible. (…) It is good to deplore, then, the small number of women on the starting lines” , underlines the athlete in his text published on social networks, which has become viral.

In reaction, the management of the Vendée Globe, the most famous races around the solo world, recalled its impossibility of “changing the rules, while the selection process [is] already engaged”, in the name of ” equity towards all the contenders “. But at the same time affirms that Clarisse to create “checks all the boxes” to benefit from the Wild Card, this invitation attributed to the discretion of the organization. However, faced with the magnitude of the controversy, Banque Populaire, which had first justified its skipper change by the desire to “guarantee the future of the project”, finally announced its pure and simple abandonment of the race.

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