![\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I0LK-VIEWIMAGE\"](\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I0LK-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBy Alexander Smith<\/p>\n
LONDON (Reuters) – French sailor Clarisse Cremer, who lost her sponsorship only months after the birth of her daughter, is back on course for the 2024 Vendee Globe, with Britain’s Alex Thomson and a new partner on board.<\/p>\n
“I was not too sure it was going to happen this way a few months ago,” Cremer told Reuters during an interview with Thomson, adding that in a matter of weeks she had a boat, a team and French cosmetics group L’OCCITANE en Provence as sponsor.<\/p>\n
Cremer, who in 2021 set the record for a solo, non-stop, monohull circumnavigation by a woman, was dropped in January by Banque Populaire which feared that new qualifying rules meant she would not be able to start the race.<\/p>\n
“It’s a huge challenge to come back from a pregnancy, so I have lots to do,” Cremer, 33, said of the run-up to her first planned offshore race, the Fastnet in late July.<\/p>\n
The 24,000 mile Vendee, known as the Everest of sailing, is one of the few top sporting events where women compete with men.<\/p>\n
Thomson, 49, whose best result in the French-dominated race was second, said L’OCCITANE had proved a “saviour” and would help to make sailing more equitable.<\/p>\n
Cremer said she was looking forward to sailing with Thomson for the first time on her newly-acquired boat, which finished second in the Vendee in 2021 and which Thomson said had cost “a little under” 5 million euros ($5.5 million). <\/p>\n
“Clarisse deserves exactly what she had before, if not more… That’s the bit that we are so excited about … for her to go out and prove that she can do this job, she can be a mum and she can be an athlete and she can be brilliant at both,” Thomson said.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.9132 euros)<\/p>\n
\n(Reporting by Alexander Smith; Editing by Christian Radnedge)<\/p>\n
![\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I0LX-VIEWIMAGE\"](\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3I0LX-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"