France: Route du Rhum yacht race sets off

It's a race that takes place every four years, bringing together a mix of professionals, leading figures in sailing and amateur sailors. Well, we can cross to get all the latest with our sports editor, Selena Sykes, who is out at sea covering that for us. Selena, great to see you. Tell us more about who's competing and the route for this year's race. Well, Jenny, what makes the Rue de Rome so unique is, as you said, it's the biggest fleet leaving from the same start line here at Saint-Malo. They all set off about three hours ago. Now 115 skippers are competing in this year's 13th edition of the Rue de Rome. As you said, it's obviously a varied group of people, amateurs and professionals. As you said, the youngest skipper is just 20 years old. The oldest is just 20 years old. It is 71, so a very different group of skippers with six different classes of boats competing in this race. Obviously, some are going faster than others. We'll get to that later on. We were very lucky to be here on this boat. You can see that I'm right now in the middle of the sea to witness the start of that race. Very, very impressive to see all of these boats up close and personal. They're obviously now far away now from where we are. We're slowly trying to make our way back to dry land. Obviously now full steam ahead, leaving from Saint-Malo to across the Atlantic, passing past the Azores before they will be heading to Guadeloupe. The fastest boats will be doing it in around six or seven days. Now six categories of boats, as you just mentioned, Selina, but the stars of the show are the The ultimate votes, what can you tell us about those? That's right, Jenny. So as I said, just said, obviously, the fastest boats, as you mentioned, are the Ultime. And they will be expecting to complete this race in around six or seven days, whereas other boats will take several weeks. They are really the beasts of the sea. We saw them earlier up close. They are really impressive boats, big boats. They're about 32 meters in length. That's about four tennis courts. So they're really impressive things to see up close. And what makes them so special as well is their technology, their foil technology, which makes them so much faster than the other boats that are competing here in this race. So we spoke to some skippers who are used to sailing on these boats, saying that. points when they're really going fast. It almost feels like they're flying. So very impressive boats here in this race. The stars of the show, shall we say, there's only eight of them in the world and they're all here competing at the Route de Rome. And a piece of history I'll just mention has been made here at this Route de Rome because we are seeing our first ever female skipper take part in an Ultim boat. That is Alexia Barillet, the first ever woman to be sailing across the Atlantic. Thank you so much indeed for bringing us those updates. Hope you don't get too seasick out there. But for now, Selina Sykes, our sports editor, thank you very much.