In Rouen, the 24-hour motorboat race on the Seine is over!
Climate change has made a new victim: we will no longer go to the 24 hour motorboat race in Rouen. This old boat race on the Seine, which was intended to be the counterpart of the 24 hours of Le Mans, will not return in 2023 to stun with speed and noise the spectators massed on the bridges and the quays in the city center of the Norman capital. .
Against the backdrop of the global battle against carbon emissions, the city, whose PS mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol is allied with environmentalists, announced this weekend that it would no longer issue authorization (and therefore a subsidy) to this endurance competition for boat engines created in 1963, long essential and popular.
The international event in decline since the 2000s
The City specifies in a press release that its decision was linked to “a difficult context” “to make choices” citing the last six months of “energy crisis”, “global warming, so visible this summer” and ” heat wave episodes. Very upset, the organizing association, the Rouen Yacht-Club, promises to demonstrate against this decision: “It is a popular demonstration withdrawn from Rouen. From an ecological point of view, we have made great efforts in recent years”, assures Jean-Claude Détot, secretary general of the organizing committee.
The sentence, wanted for a long time by elected environmentalists, fell without much surprise. The international event, in decline since the 2000s, has not taken place since 2019, for budgetary and health crisis reasons. But for the Rouen Yacht-Club, the town hall short-circuits a recovery planned for 2023 and the opportunity to “celebrate the 60th anniversary of the race”. The City will now prefer “to favor major popular festivals such as the new Joan of Arc festivals, Rouen sur Mer and the river festival”.