The Ocean Race Europe: Bittersweet finish for Alan Roura and Team AMAALA in Cartagena - 'Never experienced anything like it'
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Published 25/08/2025 at 17:10 GMT+1
Swiss skipper Alan Roura’s team arrived in Cartagena in seventh place, over a day behind the rest of the teams. Team AMAALA have finished last in every leg so far in The Ocean Race Europe, and with the oldest boat in the fleet, it’s looking like an uphill battle for Roura and his crew. Despite this, the skipper described arriving in Cartagena as "the best" of his career.
The Ocean Race Europe: Team AMAALA skipper profile
Video credit: TNT Sports
"We don’t want to be last, that’s for sure," says Team AMAALA’s skipper Alan Roura, smiling directly into the camera during his pre-race interview ahead of The Ocean Race Europe back in June.
"We know we have the oldest boat but I’m here to play the game and mix things up."
Fast forward to today and Team AMAALA have finished last in the first two legs of the race, leaving them with just five points at the bottom of the leaderboard.
The Swiss team entered the race with one core ambition: to bring more young talent from landlocked Switzerland into professional offshore sailing.
To get on to a podium would be a bonus but with the slowest boat in the fleet, five knots behind the other teams, the crew know the harsh reality of their predicted performance.
Roura is a talented athlete and an interesting character. He is also extremely well-liked and respected, by his team-mates and competition alike.
Like most offshore sailors taking part in the highest level of ocean racing, he is 90% resilience and 10% smile that says he is enjoying the hard moments probably more than he should.
"When a race is complicated and difficult, with storms and bad weather, I’m the best," he says. "If everything is straightforward, I struggle."
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©Team AMAALA
Image credit: The Ocean Race
A new challenge
Roura’s younger life was spent learning how to adapt to life on the ocean with his parents. He learnt about the world through experience and instead of pointing to oceans and maps on a whiteboard in a classroom, he was living it.
In fact, he never set foot in a classroom and, outside of sailing, doesn’t have a single academic qualification to his name.
As he worked his way up the professional sailing industry, he quickly set his sights on the Vendee Globe.
In 2016, at just 23 years old, he became the youngest skipper in history to complete the solo round-the-world race, finishing 12th.
Almost a decade later, he has completed three Vendee Globes and set the world record for the fastest solo North Atlantic crossing in just seven days 16 hours 55 minutes.
The Ocean Race Europe is a new kind of challenge for the Swiss skipper, with the ambition of taking part in The Ocean Race 2027, this is the first time Roura is in charge of a crew.
"I do feel a lot of pressure. I only feel relaxed when I get to shore." Roura says.
"Part of this is because despite being very talented, my crew are very inexperienced, most have never spent this long offshore and between my co-skipper and I we need to be across every single movement onboard 24/7."
"When I saw the tears, I realised it was all worth it"
Trailing into Cartagena more than a day behind the rest of the fleet, the young crew onboard AMAALA were feeling a little dejected.
"We lived knowing we were going to be slower than the other boats, but that was a long leg," says young talent Jessica Berthoud.
"I’ve never sailed this long on a boat, this is the longest I’ve ever been at sea. There were moments we all hit a depressive state, at one point we just weren’t moving and the other teams were already in Cartagena.
"That was painful. Thankfully, and thanks to Alan we have a good vibe onboard and we’re able to pull each other out of it, but it can be hard."
Perhaps more than in any other sport, ocean racing bonds and humbles competitors in a way that only mother nature can.
During The Ocean Race, sailors can find themselves closer to those in the International Space Station than anyone on land, and with this level of isolation and risk comes the understanding that, should anything go wrong, your best chance of survival is your closest rival.
And, as offshore sailing events are operating at the whim of the weather, boats can arrive in the middle of the night, where the overwhelming feeling of disappointment is coupled with a lonely dock and a few scattered shore crew.
"We didn’t expect anything," says Berthoud. "We hoped may be a few race crew might come out but we had no expectations arriving so late after everyone else, and late at night.
"Then one of the crew spotted race management and the camera crew and that was so nice. Then there were a few more boats and we thought, 'okay, they must be coming back from a cruise or something'.
"We saw this huge line of people starting at the exit of the port and originally our onboard reporter looked through her camera lens and told us it must be a queue for a nightclub. We didn’t think for a second it was for us.
"It was mega emotional when we realised, honestly, to see that and feel the support, it was heartwarming."
It was not just the race crew and Spanish public who had shown up, but all the other skippers, teams and crews were also on the pontoon waiting. The atmosphere was electric.
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Dockside in Cartagena for the arrival of Team AMAALA
Image credit: The Ocean Race
"The crew were a bit low, I had to host an onboard meeting to balance out the emotions," explains Roura.
"It’s been hard being so far behind but this arrival has been the best of my career. It’s been unbelievable.
"We didn’t win the race, but that moment when the crew realised the crowd was for them, I saw tears in all of their eyes and I thought to myself, every single moment leading up to this point is worth it, just for that moment.
"I reminded myself, if there are only seven boats in this race it’s because it’s one of the toughest races to do. We might be last, but we are here and right now, I think that’s what matters."
How to follow The Ocean Race Europe
The new Onboard update show
With more onboard technology and more access to the sailors than ever before, a brand-new show, Onboard, has launched and is now available to stream on discovery+.
New episodes will air at 19:00 UK time every Tuesday and Friday on TNT Sports.
The official tracker
The brand-new official Ocean Race Europe tracker, allowing viewers to track the fleet in real time, is available on The Ocean Race website.
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