Italian sailor, Ambrogio Beccaria, led his Allagrande Mapei Racing crew to an amazing win in the fourth leg of The Ocean Race Europe 2025 in a heart-thumping conclusion that saw spectators lining the shores of the historic harbour at Genoa long into the early morning.
Beccaria’s victory, achieved at the end of an exhausting 1,200 nautical-mile run, starting at Alicante, Spain, only increases his image as one of the most competitive yacht racing talents on the continent and brings a new twist to the running championship.
The race, which started off in breezy Mediterranean winds on November 28, challenged competitors up and down the Italian Riviera with some of the world’s sharpest squalls and currents as well. Beccaria, on the Italian construction giant Mapei-financed IMOCA 60-class yacht, was a smooth carbon-fibre masterpiece that finished at 3:47 a.m. local time, only 14 minutes ahead of the French boat, Team Banque Populaire. This is in Genoa, in Italy – we have given our souls to every tack, Beccaria said after the race, and his voice was rough with hours of concentrated concentration on the helm.
The drama of the leg was played in the last 50 miles, where a tactical speculation had come off intelligently. When it grew dark on Thursday evening, Beccaria chose an inshore passage and made his way, hugging the Ligurian shore to take a good thermal breeze.
But his competitors, headed by Armel Le Cleac’h in Banque Populaire, followed the more secure route offshore, only to fall into an infuriating stalemate. Beccaria defended it as being just instinct when he was debriefing in his race village. The sea here is even more familiar with me than anybody – I could feel the change coming.
This victory is the second leg win of Beccaria in the 2025 edition, which sets Allagrande Mapei Racing in the first position in the general classification with 65 points. The team has moved up by eight points, over the Dutch VO71 team of Team AkzoNobel, with the French and Swedish teams in close pursuit.
The result was celebrated by the organisers as a shot in the arm to European yacht racing, particularly given the build-up to the full circumnavigation of the Ocean Race in 2026.
Historic Milestone: Women Take Reign of South African Regatta
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the yachting game in South Africa put the country into the news with a pioneering feat in the Lipton Challenge Cup. A women-dominated crew became the first in the 116-year history of the event and was the first all-women crew to win the race in Table Bay at Cape Town, as the all-women Hermanus Yacht Club crew defeated 12 other competitors in the race on December 4.
The Lipton Cup, which was first held in 1909 and informally referred to as the America’s Cup of the South, pits provincial yacht clubs in a form of fleet racing in exactly the same J/22 keelboats.
Being led by Cape Town native Zara Jansen, the Hermanus crew, with five women aged between 22 and 45 years, prevailed, with perfect starts and perfect spinnaker handling, in the finals. They won their series 3-1 over the Royal Cape Yacht Club, and the weekend was marked by intense rivalry and the winds reaching speeds of up to 25 knots.
This is not only about the trophy, but it is also about breaking ceilings, which Jansen said when he was in the house to take the podium, with the shining silver Lipton Cup gleaming under the African sunshine. This win follows increased demands to embrace gender equity in the sport of yachting, and the number of women competing in significant regattas has increased by 30% since 2020.
Supported by local sponsorships and a crowdfunding campaign, and training intensely on the small fleet owned by the club, Jansen and his team became underdogs, making their underdog status their motivational asset.
Even along the waterline, the win is felt. Welding South African yachting officials pointed out that it has the potential to induce investment in women’s programmes, particularly with the country looking forward to hosting parts of the 2026 ocean race. Regatta Director Pieter Strydom said that these were the women who had rewritten our history books. Their tale will be reverberated in clubhouses from Durban to Durban.
French Duo wins Atlantic in Transat CAFE L’OR Thriller
French sailor Jeremie Beyou and Morgan Lagraviere, who were competing in the IMOCA section of the Transat CAFE L’OR Le Havre Normandie 2025, became the first to reach Martinique in a scathing 18 days across the sea at Le Havre. Their Charal yacht, a state-of-the-art foil-assisted monohull, made an 18 knot average across the Atlantic, and was pushed late off by a late-arriving Britain vessel, Sam Davies, on Initiative Coeur.
The domination of the duo became clear at the starting line, where they moved ahead in the English Channel and then used the trade winds to make an unprecedented run. The sea had given, and the sea had taken, but Charal had never failed, as he had docked in Fort-de-France.
The race, which was a qualifying race in the Vendee Globe, had 25 entries and showcased improvements in the sustainable design of yachts, with Charal using bio-based resins in the construction.
This time in ULTIM class, Tom Laperche and Franck Cammas beat a nose-gail and were only two hours over competitors on Banque Populaire XI. Their novel solid wingsails attached to the trimaran made them reach speeds of more than 40 knots, which highlights the role of the class in pushing the limit of maritime technology.
Cape Town, Genoa, Martinique, these give us a vivid picture of worldwide yachting on December 5, 2025 – a game in which tradition is brought into contact with trailblazing, and with each horizon is the other adventure. The world awaits new waves of innovations and victories as the teams re-form to go to the next leg and regattas.
