Thomas Coville is a world-famous French sailor and yacht racer. He is the record holder for sailing around the world single-handed without stopping in 49 days and 3 hours.

Coville has won most nautical races, whether in single or multihulls, alone or in a crew.

Early life and education

Coville was born on 10 May 1968 in Rennes, France.
His parents introduced him to sailing, and he fell in love with it.
In his early childhood, he enrolled in the sailing school of Plérin in Côtes-d'Armor. While learning sailing, he was introduced to nautical competition on small dinghies.
He earned a degree in Computer science, and accounting and finance.

Sailing Career and achievements

Before taking on sailing and yacht racing as a full-time career, he worked as an engineer at Bolloré group.
He won Tour de France twice between 1985 and 1993.
He then won the 1998 Transat Jacques Vabre.
In the same year, he won his first solo transatlantic race, Route du Rhum, in the monohull category.
In 2011, Coville won the prestigious Volvo Ocean Race, racing around the world with stopovers, with Franck Cammas.
In 2014, he finished around the world sailing single-handed on the trimaran Sodeb'O in 61 days, 7 minutes and 32 seconds. He attempted to break the record held by Francis Joyon but failed due to unfavorable weather. Joyon had set the record by sailing in 57 days, 13hr, 34min, and 6sec, in 2008. The previous best of 71-days was held by Britain's Ellen MacArthur.
Finally, in December 2016, Coville broke Joyon's record by 12 days. He finished sailing around the world single-handed without stopping in 49 days, 3 hours, 7 minutes and 38 seconds. He rarely slept for more than 30 minutes at a time in the voyage that he began on November 6th. Coville sailed the Sodebo Ultim'.