Sanni Beucke: In Boris Herrmann's Heckwasser to the Vendée Globe: An Olympic silver medallist on an offshore course: "This race is female"

One year, two worlds: In summer 2021, Sanni Beucke celebrated winning silver in the small 49er FX sailing skiff with her helmswoman Tina Lutz at the Olympic sailing regatta off Enoshima. She has now set off to conquer the world's oceans on large keelboats. Olympic silver medallist Susann Beucke officially presented her new offshore solo campaign "This race is female" for the first time on Wednesday at the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein in Hamburg. YACHT and YACHT online had already reported in detail on Beucke's first steps. Beucke's credo, which tipped the scales in favour of the unusual campaign name: "Women need more visibility and role models." Three days before her 31st birthday on 11 June, the Kiel native, who was already able to gain her first Imoca experience alongside Vendée Globe star Boris Herrmann, said in the Hanseatic city: "My heart beats very loudly for offshore sailing."

Susann Beucke's long-term goal is to take part in the 2028/2029 Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race, while officially bidding farewell to 15 years of competitive Olympic sport alongside Tina Lutz. The sailors had missed out on qualifying for the Olympic Games twice before realising their dream at the third attempt and crowning it with silver in Enoshima. "We had a wonderful time together with lots of highs and left the lows behind," said Susann Beucke at the Kiel Week press conference, "when it's at its best, you should set off for new shores." Susann Beucke and Tina Lutz, who has since started her career in HR management for a large Swiss company in Austria and is getting married next month, want to compete in one last regatta together in their favourite and home waters on their own doorstep in Strande "to enjoy" during the second Olympic half of Kiel Week (18 to 26 June).

Beucke had already opened her new career chapter at the beginning of the year by entering the demanding Figaro class. "I ventured into the shark tank at the beginning of February," she recalls of her first step into the heartbeat chamber of solo sailing in Lorient, "the NRV and some private sponsors supported me." In Brittany, she completed a very challenging month of training in tough winter conditions and a French-speaking environment that was not always easy for her to understand. "I've known for a long time that I want to become an ocean sailor and sail the Vendée Globe one day. I like challenges and change, I want to follow through and do it now," she says. As an offshore trainee, she has chosen the Figaro class, the highest level of difficulty in the French-influenced solo sailing world, to start with. She knows that she will learn a lot in the first few years. The realisation after the first few months: "I had thought that I would be able to use perhaps 30 percent of my skills from Olympic sailing. And then you find out: If it's five per cent, it's already a lot." Beucke's attitude towards the future is correspondingly realistic: "I'm not in the Figaro class to win medals and trophies, but to learn. I'd rather not achieve top results, but become really, really good."

Two partners are already on board

In two to three years, Beucke plans to switch to medium-sized keelboats of the Class 40 type. After that, the switch to the Imoca class and the Vendée Globe launch in 2028 are on the wish list. Beucke has already found two partners for this in collaboration with the Hamburg agency Krugmedia Communication Architects. However, they will not be presented until Kieler Woche. Before that, Susann Beucke will fire the first starting shot for the world's largest women's regatta on 10 June on Hamburg's Outer Alster. She will then take part in the Helga Cup herself with wheelchair basketball silver medallist Anne Patzwald.