“FRANKFURT. On its 80th anniversary, a woman—and boat owner—has for the first time won one of the world's toughest offshore regattas: 60-year-old Australian Lin Jiang, together with her French co-skipper Alexis Loison, secured victory in the Sydney-to-Hobart race on corrected time, thereby winning the Tattersall Cup. At the same time, the pair became the first duo to succeed in winning the Southern Hemisphere's most prestigious sailing trophy—doing so against a formidable fleet of ocean-racing machines crewed by professional sailors. Lin, a native of China who emigrated from Fujian to Sydney, did not learn to sail until she arrived there, at the age of 47. The anniversary regatta—in which she competed under the sail number AUS 888 (considered a lucky number by the Chinese)—was only her second Sydney-to-Hobart race. The previous year, sailing with co-skipper François Guiffant, Lin had finished in 20th place. To achieve this victory, she needed both luck and money. For one thing, Lin won only because she successfully lodged a protest against the original winners in Hobart. For another, she is the owner of the racing yacht *Min River*—named after a river in her home province. And in Loison, she had hired a top-tier sailor.
For the Frenchman from Cherbourg, this marks his third major victory of the year, following his win in the *Solitaire du Figaro*—a triumph that took him 19 years of attempts to achieve—and his victory in the revived Fastnet Race off the English coast. As early as late September, following his victory in his home waters, Loison had remarked—almost prophetically: "This is going to be my year; I kept telling myself over and over, 'This is going to be my year,' and then I simply focused on the details and left nothing to chance." This approach applied equally to the regatta along the Australian coast, where the pair excelled through constant sail changes and in the treacherous swells—conditions in which many almost abandoned the race, while a third of the ships struggled with seasickness. However, they also had luck on their side: for the first victory by a woman in 80 years became possible only because the original winner—the French duo Michel Quintin and Yann Rigal from New Caledonia—committed a bitter error after four days and nights at sea, with the finish port already in sight. In an effort to make their boat gleam for the anticipated fanfare at the Hobart quay, they hoisted their spinnaker during a lull in the wind—a move strictly against the rules—which was subsequently captured in photographs.
Following Lin’s protest, the jury imposed a time penalty on *BNC Net Leon*, dropping them back to second place. Lee Goddard, chairman of the arbitration panel, described the verdict as "harsh, but absolutely fair: They broke the rules." "I never in my wildest dreams expected to win here," said Lin. Among the 128 boats that set sail from Sydney on Boxing Day, only 13 were skippered by women. "People always tend to think only of the big racing yachts—the 100-foot 'Maxis'." The two contenders vying for the overall victory on corrected time—after the Maxi *Comanche* had already crossed the finish line first two days earlier—were, at roughly ten meters in length, among the smallest boats in the fleet.
The larger racing vessels had stalled in the calm waters off Tasmania, allowing the smaller boats to close the gap.
What ultimately mattered was that they had managed to survive the first night—battling through a storm and waves exceeding three meters in height.
German skipper Jost Stollmann, who had achieved a respectable 18th-place finish with his yacht *Alithia*, described the quintessential Sydney-Hobart conditions—alternating between storms and dead calms—on Wednesday as a journey "from thrill to torture." [1]
1. Mit Glück und Geld: Seglerin Lin Jiang gewinnt Sydney-Hobart-Regatta.Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 02 Jan 2026: 31. CHRISTOPH HEIN
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