Saint-Tropez ready for thrilling 52 SUPER SERIES curtain raiser ahead of an epic season

by 52 Super Series 29 Apr 20:44 BST 29 April - 4 May 2025

2025 52 Super Series practice race start in Saint-Tropez © Nico Martinez / 52 Super Series

In a light breeze which reached 10kts at the most - a foretaste of what is forecast for the coming days on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez - Crioula and Vayu won today's short, sharp warm-up practice races which served as the final dress rehearsal before the start of the highly anticipated five regatta, six month long 2025 52 SUPER SERIES championship season.

Sailing smartly and sniffing out the best strands of breeze on the beautiful but challenging racing arena, first the Brasilian team and then the Thai crew successively issued a reminder that any team among the 11 crews from 10 different nation can realistically hope to win races here and indeed at future 2025 regattas.

Excitement and anticipation

There is a great sense of excitement and anticipation on the dockside in the heart of Saint-Tropez's historic Vieux Port. Whilst hundreds of tourists and visitors clearly love the ritual and spectacle of daily dock out and dock in of the boats and sailors from the world's leading grand prix monohull circuit, among the top sailors themselves, the shore teams and the seasoned observers the pre-regatta talk is of who has the tools and the talent to win the 2025 season. The belief is that It has never been so open and by all accounts it will go down, once again, to the final races on the final day of this season.

Back in action

The defending 2024 champions are now known as American Magic Quantum Racing and have long time leader Terry Hutchinson (USA) back after a two year America's Cup hiatus. Talismanic owner-driver Doug DeVos will steer here, next month in Baiona and in Porto Cervo at the season finale in September. But it will take time for Hutchinson, DeVos, new navigator Sara Stone, Victor Diaz de Leon moving to strategist and Lucas Calabrese as main trimmer, to really gel as a winning team from one which clearly has all the pieces and potential to defend the circuit title.

On the dockside in Saint-Tropez the five times Rolex TP52 World Champion Hutchinson acknowledged they have something of a hill to climb.... "Today was great to be back on the water with this fleet. I got a penalty from Vasco straight off so it is just awesome. You go away from this circuit and then have the opportunity to come back, and I am so lucky to come back and race with the team which won last season, and clearly did an incredible job proving themselves, I am thankful to be given this opportunity to be back with these guys, and the opportunity to be back with Doug is awesome, I am looking forwards to it."

He expands, "Right now on a scale from one to ten we are at three in terms of gelling, two or three, and we have a lot of work to do with our speed team too, with Lucas Calabrese in on the mainsail role, these are big shoes to fill (replacing Warwick Fleury) but Lucas is such an incredible talent. There is a guy in AC37 who was trained to be a helmsman but never anticipated racing the boat and then got on the boat and did a phenomenal job. We know all the clichés, 'it's a marathon et cetera' but I think for us the first half of the series and the season is kind of surviving, getting better and not digging too big a hole for us. But we all have experience. Sara and I have done two GL52 regattas in our Tactician and Navigator roles. She is incredibly smart, very clever and very quickly is going to evolve into a great racing navigator, she is great with electronics and has a great mind. And with the 52s we have 22 races so far this season already."

Provezza could repeat

The team which won here two years ago Ergin Imre's Provezza are gearing up for a very serious tilt at their first circuit title, having lost only on tie-break in 2023. Spanish navigator Nacho Postigo is confident but totally objective as an original co-founder of the TP52 fleet in the Mediterranean 20 years ago this season, especially as he considers their team is still learning they only launched in August last year...

"The Provezza programme is on fire! We are approaching this season with great expectations but we are still learning the boat. We are possibly still on half way there. We still had teething problems last season and now we are only starting to feel the potential and start learning the boat better. But we feel confident here in the light breeze. When we lined up with the other boats in the light and we would say the lighter it gets the stronger we feel. We were not expecting that."

Postigo reveals, "Two years when we won we were super strong in our starts and that gave us the flexibility to approach the first mark how we wanted and that gave us the flexibility to do what we wanted. If we can replicate that and start strongly and we can choose we can be in good shape. But I have to teel you that from what I have seen on the water today there are 11 boats and I would like someone here to explain to me who the weaker teams are, because I did not see any. The new teams today were impressive in everything starts, speed, manoeuvres. Honestly anyone can win!"

And whilst Crioula and Vayu served notice of their potency again today so Andrea Lacorte's brand new Alkedo powered by Vitamina team have consistently underlined they, as a successful ClubSwan 50 team stepping up to the top league, are already a class act, a crew with the experience, passion and potential to podium very soon.

Winds for the Wednesday's first races, due to start at 1300hrs CET, are set to be light. All of the action is streamed live on the main event channels with programming due to start 15 minutes before the first sequence.

52 SUPER SERIES SAINT-TROPEZ SAILING WEEK entries: