Benjamin Dutreux heaps praise on GUYOT environnement crew ahead of Leg 4 of Ocean Race 2023

Benjamin Dutreux has praised his GUYOT environnement – Team Europe crew following a challenging start to the 2023 Ocean Race and is full of motivation looking ahead to Leg 4.

They lie bottom of the standings with five legs still to race, including a transatlantic crossing from the USA to Denmark where double points are up for grabs.

“It was a real blow,” Dutreux said about having to retire midway through the third leg – the longest in the race’s 50-year history.

“Giving up is never a nice moment. Especially since, on top of that, three members of our crew had never rounded Cape Horn.

“But failure is formative, so we shouldn’t stop there.”

The French skipper explained how he raised the morale of his disheartened crew, and believes their experiences have made them “stronger than ever” going into the fourth leg of eight.

“I tried to put things into perspective pretty quickly,” he said. “I quickly switched to talk about the future. In fact, I just tried to be myself and share what I felt.

“There are real links that have been created. This has made the team even stronger than before.”

“We were proud with all the teams to have arrived in Brazil before the others because we managed to do a repair in eight days which can take more than three weeks in a classic construction site,” Dutreux said, reflecting on GUYOT environnement’s return to shore to repair damages to the boat.

“There are a lot of things that were on our work list that we hadn’t had time to do. So we were able to move forward a little more.”

“We’re going to be able to play the spoilsports,” he added, looking ahead to the next leg and the remainder of the race. “There, we have more blinders. We have two and a half months of racing left to try things that we haven’t tried.

“We’re as free as the air compared to others. We have a way to play good shots.”

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