He has now lost his battle against cancer. The hearts of his family, friends and companions are heavy on this day. The winner of the Vendée Globe has succumbed to cancer at the age of 42. Dalin's family told the French news agency AFP on 11 June. His wife Perrine Le Pape wrote: "It is with deep sadness that my family and I announce the death of my husband Charlie Dalin, who passed away after a long illness." At the same time, she asked that the family's privacy be respected.
"Farewell to a giant" is the headline of the French magazine Voiles et Voiliers on 11 June, paying tribute to a sailor who has achieved great things in his sport. Despite his rare cancer, which Charlie Dalin only made public after his Vendée Globe triumph in autumn 2025, he managed to reach the summit with "Macif Santé Prévoyance" in 2024/2025. In his book "La Force du destin" (The Force of Destiny), he spoke very openly about his rare cancer.
Defying fate: triumph with cancer
Now he has lost his battle with cancer and died in hospital in Cornouaille on 11 June. It is also fate that on this very day, his successor Sam Goodchild crossed the Arctic Circle at half-time in the Vendée Arctique with Charlie Dalin's Vendée Globe winning yacht "Macif Santé Prévoyance", heralding the start of the second half. Dalin had placed the project in Goodchild's hands, remaining loyal to his team as a wise advisor for as long as he could.
Charlie Dalin achieved his greatest victory at the 10th Vendée Globe on 14 January 2025 after 64 days and 19 hours of racing and a sensational run. He beat the record set by Armel Le Cléac'h in 2017 by almost ten days. It was a doubly sweet triumph, as Dalin's relationship with the Vendée Globe was intense.
In autumn 2023, Charlie Dalin found out that he had cancer. He did not tell the public. He battled the disease and maintained his courage, staying on course and proving that dreams are achievable even when wrestling with fate. In his book, written in collaboration with journalist Didier Ravon, the skipper with the brilliant track record gives a detailed account of his childhood, his first regattas and, of course, the race of his life and the two very different editions he went through and experienced.
"One of the best days of my life!"
Dalin described his triumphant arrival in January 2025 as "undoubtedly one of the best days of my life". After so many years in racing, he had never experienced a moment like this before. And said: "I've been dreaming of this victory for four years - first at the finish, first in the overall standings!" This sporting accomplishment was preceded by Dalin's first, successful and yet unfortunate Vendée Globe. Maestro Dalin had also finished first in the 9th Vendée Globe four years earlier.
However, several skippers, including Boris Herrmann, were involved in the rescue operation for Kevin Escoffier in December 2020. The time credits subsequently awarded by the jury ensured that Yannick Bestaven won the solo race around the world with a lead of around two and a half hours over Dalin. Dalin had experienced the decisive 27 January like a dance on a volcano: first arriving as the fastest in the triumph in Les Sables-D'Olonne, then being overtaken. Like a battle cry, he held on to it for four years: "My story with the Vendée Globe is not finished!"
Sophisticated, dynamic and very assertive: Charlie Dalin, who was named World Sailor of the Year in 2025, was a beacon of the Vendée Globe and the entire strong French offshore sailing sport. For him, it was love at first ride in 1992 when he first encountered sailing on a holiday course off the Crozon peninsula in Breton waters. His grandparents had rented a large holiday home there for the whole family, where there were no sailors, until his mother Christine signed Charlie up for a holiday course just for fun. She remembered it vividly, describing the first dinghy experience to the daily newspaper Ouest France as a "revelation for Charlie", like a "lightning bolt".
From Le Havre to the offshore summit
"Back then, it was the great freedom that excited me the most," Dalin himself once said about the beginnings of his conquest of a new world of wind and waves. The young Charlie enjoyed the fact that there were no roads or predetermined routes when sailing. Just this glittering expanse where you could apparently go anywhere with the wind. "This invisible force that drives you forward was magical for me," says the man from the land of Vikings and sailors, describing what became his elixir of life.
His mother recognised: "As soon as he was on the water, he blossomed. When we came back from holiday, I signed him up for Sport Nautique et Plaisance in Le Havre straight away." Dalin's career began in his native town of Le Havre in Normandy, where he proudly carried the Olympic flame through the streets he knew so well last summer - and never stopped. Even there, the young Dalin attracted attention a few years later because he liked to sail 420s single-handed out of the harness.
He explains sailing to his parents with cutlery at the table. His room became a refuge for posters of his heroes, autographs and documents. With increasing passion, he roamed around Le Havre's jetties of the Transat Jacques Vabre boats. "Every two years, I found myself dreaming among the TJV boats," he recalls. He admired these objects of his growing desire live on the radio, in newspapers and sailing magazines.
Heavy hearts on the death of Charlie Dalin
At the age of twelve, he was aware of a Vendée Globe for the first time. He told Paris Match magazine: "Back then, people didn't follow races the way they do today. I mainly watched it after the finishes, when the sailors all handed in their video tapes so that the images could be broadcast on television. I didn't even think that one day I would be able to do that." And how he was! The fact that he had to brave such a serious illness to do so was unknown during his last great solo around the world.
More about Charlie Dalin
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
