FR
ENCharrez, an experienced offshore and ocean racer with crews, was conducting physical performance testing and analysis with 15 skippers on the last Vendée Globe. Through her love of triathlon she connected with ‘Szabi’ a six times Ironman finisher and elite triathlete. He is a relative newcomer to short handed IMOCA racing having only set out on his personal journey when he bought Aria Huusela’s former Stark IMOCA after the 2020-2021 Vendée Globe.
Szabi fights on towards 2028 After retiring from the Vendée Globe the Hungarian skipper is back
IMOCA
Édition 2025
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21 October 2025 - 18h30
After the intense disappointment of having to retire from the last Vendée Globe, limping into Cape Town with a standing rigging problem which threatened his mast, Hungarian skipper Szabolcs Weöres is back on the start line for his second Transat Café Lor, the double handed race really representing the start of his 2028 campaign. He is racing with Swiss co-skipper 29 year old sports scientist Berenice Charrez whose first major IMOCA race this is.
The former America’s Cup rigger and dinghy racer is determined to complete the next Vendée Globe, not least because he wants to experience the Big South. It is unfinished business and this two handed race is an important stage. But he admits it was hard to get up of the canvas after his knockout blow.
He observes, “There are a lot of things which are not known now with my campaign, it is not easy to renegotiate with sponsors but the best way is always to keep going forwards. That is my decision and so I am heading for the 2028 Vendée Globe and this is an important race for the qualification process. It is different now than last time but in any case having a boat ready to go is a big asset, whatever happens.”
As usual in a post Vendée Globe year there is a hiatus and it is hard to know how many projects will make it to the start line in 2028, but Szabi’s view is he needs to push on in a position to start the race tomorrow and he feels strongly there should be places for small projects like his and others. He believes multiple big budget projects tell similar stories,
“ Most people say the race will be smaller but I think we were losing the spirit of the Vendée Globe.” He contends, “Before it was 40 boats and 40 stories and now it everything was so much more pointing towards the winner and I think that kills the IMOCA class. It has happened with so many sailing events, the Volvo, Whitbread, America’s Cup need to to have different stories, like that of keeping a campaign like mine alive, a small one like this. We are a small campaign. We are just the two of us here and I feel we are carrying the flag for the ‘dreamers’ keeping it all alive for the ‘dreamers.’ A competitive Class40 would be impossible for me to set up by comparison. And it is a big fleet here so I am not sure sponsors want to spend for a 20th place, say.”
But he is proud of where he has got to since first stepping on an IMOCA in 2021. He came from offshore big boat sailing, “I have to reflect on where I was before, five years ago. I knew nothing. I knew nothing about ocean racing, nothing about solo and short handed sailing. And now I am here with a reliable boat that I know every screw, every fitting on. I have gained so much confidence in my ability and the boat, I know this French sailing world, I like it. I think the French like me now too. At the beginning it was like ‘who is this man, is he coming from the moon?’ but you have to prove yourself and they see you are still alive and racing. And there is a respect because we are just two of use doing everything here this week, when other teams are four, five, six, seven people working on a boat. “
He has the boat in still the same configuration as on the Vendée Globe but would like new sails. “I have changed nothing on the boat. But I missed out on the Southern Ocean so I want to get down there, in the end I sailed to Cape Town and back. My mainsail was ripped and I fixed it. It has been repaired by North Sails in Cape Town – they told my repair would have lasted forever and it was harder to take it apart, so they offered me a job there any time.”
He adds, “And so the goal is still the same…sail hard and arrive safely. Our competitors are mainly we have five daggerboard boats but realistically it is the other Owen Clarke boat is Fabrice Amedeo’s boat, the others are a bit quicker.
The pair met when Berenice was doing a scientific study of 15 sailors on the last Vendée Globe and Szabi was one of them.
The Swiss co-skipper explains, “I did a lot of triathlons as well and so that was a bit of a connection too, I work in performance sports and really look at sailing from the athletic point of view whereas I guess maybe the older generation it is maybe about adventure and proving how tough you can be without a lot of training properly as an athlete so I think Szabi and I have have a similar mindset. I did The Ocean Race 2023 with the Mexican team in the VO65 and sailed a lot with teams but not done much short handed racing. I did another two handed race, the Caribbean 600 on a Figaro.
She continues, “Szabi know the boat so well. I bring some youth and have raced a lot offshore and have studied sailors in terms of physiology, nutrition, sleep and so I have a lot of good insights. We have probably done more than 3000 nautical miles together. I want to learn, to have fun and the performance will come with that.”
But at the same time she is furthering her studies and advancing the hardware set up, Szabi explains, “We want to work on Berniece’s studies on the boat and actually see things in practice, the results and learn. I am very interested in this for the future. There is so much room for improvement even for the very good guys and girls. She has some very interesting results, monitoring nutrition, sleep, body composition, muscle mass and then flexibility and stress levels, looking to keep up your energy. These things were not so much a priority for me but I have learned I have to improve my sleep a lot. It was interesting I was sailing like an old fashioned guy and so Berniece could not see the difference between when I was asleep and awake. I was in a half coma all day. And the very competitive guys were having active short sleep and when they were awake were much more intense. This is what I want to work on, to train to push hard and sleep hard.”
There is considerable scope for applying what they are learning,
Berenice explains, “At the moment we use a Garmin which is modified to continuously measure biometrics at a high frequency. Then we have an environmental sensor on the boat, which understands noise, motion and humidity, and we monitor how all these data influence sleep quality, stress levels and things like that and then we have glucose sensor too which measure glycaemia – where you have low glucose your cognitive ability diminishes, so trying to prevent that before you hit that dip. I have been building a system that is more automated and integrated, a hub which collects these environmental data and connects to biosensors and it merges these with local processors to provide information and then we connect it to the boat computer so you can see the human data next to the boat data, so that is at prototype. There are three prototypes on other boats, Malizia, Holcim and on The Famous Project with Alexia Barrier.”