Testimony of Christian Dumard about Squid

After having passed part of his childhood on a sailing ship of his family, Christian Dumard takes part during his studies (between Europe and Canada) in many races as a skipper. Resolutely impassioned in veil he ran in Corum Sailing TEAM, period during which he won in the Sète TEAM of the Tour de France in veil in 1988, in 1994 in the Team Marc Pajot Canal + for the Cup of America, then he will be world champion in Mumm 36 in 1995, then victorious of Quebec/Saint-Malo in 1996.

He also assumed the management of the Sodebo’s veil team project during 4 years.

Thanks to these beautiful experiments, Christian Dumard shares his veil experiment as a router to many skippers such as Thomas Coville (which he accompanied in some of his records in solitary), or many figarists and minists.

1. In which context did you use Squid recently?

C.D. : One of my latest uses of Squid was on the Mini-transatlantic race which is from Douarnenez to Guadeloupe, with a stage in Lanzarote. I was working for Frédéric Denis who has won the second stage. He also won the standings in “proto”. On a podium line I was even working for Yann Lipinski and Tanguy le Turquais, second and third of the last stage.

2. In this type of sport events, what was your use of Squid?

C.D. : During the race the sailors were not allowed to use Squid on board, not even communications tool, and no data. The added value of Squid for this race was during the preparation.

3. What’s happening during this kind of preparation with the skippers and their teams?

C.D. : Before the beginning we’ve worked on overall strategic models, to analyze different hypothesis that could occur during the race – elaborating different scenarios for the first or the second stage. To the skippers it’s very important to understand what could happen after four or five days.         

4. At fact Squid was a relevant tool in the victories of the skippers with whom you work?

C.D. : Yes, our work was rewarded as everything was going on well for the skippers, on the boats of series or on the prototypes. For example Frederic Denis was the third for the first stage, and then had won the second stage, to easily win the podium for the general ranking with fourteen hours ahead the second on arrival.

5. More precisely in what consist an assisted preparation by Squid?

C.D. : Tanguy le Turquais for series boat won the first stage, and arrived second to the second stage. He won the second step of the podium. The preparation achieves to create overall strategic models: showing scenarios which were highly variable for the last three days. So we defined a strategy which would be valid for any situation with limit caps, and similar edges … The objective was to elaborate simple rules to provide in a simple and efficient way.

The result of this collaboration, with Great Circle and Squid has been great for us.