Costa, offshore racing in the blood
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The Catalan hopes to find colors during the last stage.
On board “Express”
The Spaniard Pep Costa (Team Play to Be-Terravia) perfectly started the third and final stage of Solitaire du Figaro 2022. In Corentin Horeau’s transom (Blue Mutual), he passed the last buoy of the coastal course on Sunday from Royan in second position, just ahead of Guillaume Pirouelle (Normandy region), the leader of the provisional general classification.
Something to perk him up as he tops out at 28th place. The sailor present for the second time on the queen of offshore races had hoped before leaving Charente-Maritime, it was finally going to be his time: “We had two great stages, a little too hard for me in the end result. It wasn’t really what I expected because my start to the race was good, often in the top 5, but I didn’t manage to put it into practice. I think I was unlucky on my side and sometimes I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it’s the Figaro race and it’s played like that. You have to accept it and try to get up and not let go. I am confident for the future, I feel that I have taken a step forward.
Small budget
Barcelona’s Pep Costa is the first proud Spaniard to rub his oilskin on the Solitaire since the Garcia brothers twenty-three years ago. His passion for the open sea came to him in 2008, when he discovered the Vendée Globe: “Michel Desjoyeaux inspired me a lot. His victory made me want to be like him one day. To make it my job. I was born for this, I believe”explains the engineer in physics and mathematics after studying in New York until 2020.
Read alsoSolitaire du Figaro: Achille Nebout and Tom Laperche happy
With this in mind, the now 23-year-old came to settle in Lorient last year to do Figaro: “I want to fight against the best. But there is a first fight. The hardest part is finding partners. It’s harder than the competition. A stage that you never complete because you don’t always have what you want. With a small budget, my sponsors still gave me the means to be in the race this year. French people who believe in me and support me wholeheartedly. It is for them that I fight for good results. At the same time, I am building my dream little by little.”
Pep Costa is appreciated by his opponents, and, in the middle in general, his kindness and his permanent smile help him: “I like people. There’s no point in doing something like that if you don’t share. My welcome in the Figaro class was incredible. We fight each other all the time, but we’re friends.” Friends that he probably annoyed during the descent to a mark at the entrance to the Arcachon basin when he was still second. The following will be different: “It’s going to be complicated to reach the Farallones Islands in eastern Galicia, with a lot of transitions. Afterwards, we will have to be well placed because we are going to have south-westerly winds for a big, fast and sporty tack towards Saint-Nazaire.” To make him dream.
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