“Do I notice more if I stop at the finish line or if I continue?”. It is a version of Nanni Moretti’s famous dilemma: in the middle of the Atlantic the great sailor Bernard Moitessier (1925-1994) had broken all his opponents and was about to win the Golden Globe Race, the first non-stop round-the-world regatta, when he asked himself if what he was doing was right and sensible, and suddenly decided not to point the bow any more towards England (where he would close the triumphant circle) to instead pull straight and do another half-round the world non-stop to Tahiti, not caring about the race. This happened in 1968, the year of fantasy in power; Moitessier justified his extravagant choice as a desire not to soil an epic enterprise by degrading it to a sporting result and an economic reward, and this contributed to making him a legendary character. However, we allow ourselves to raise some doubts about the effects of such behavior in other contexts: imagine an Italian champion of the 100 meters at the Olympics who is about to win the gold medal but instead deviates from the finish line and starts to exit, and then explain to Italy and the world that winning is vulgar? We are convinced that its popularity would suffer and the epithets would be wasted.
Instead Moitessier deliberately turned his back on sport and therefore it is not on sporting merits that he should be judged. The French sailor, who was also an acclaimed writer, is the protagonist of a beautiful comic novel entitled “Moitessier. The long route of a free man ”, author Gabriele Musante (Nutrimenti, 160 pages, 20 euros).
Childhood in French Indochina, World War II and Vietnam, Pacific sailing to Cape Horn and the Caribbean, love affairs, marriages and shipwrecks, one of which while Moitessier was sailing with actor Klaus Kinski. A beautiful adventurous life over the top. And yes, Moitessier also found the answer to the question “Do I notice more…?”: He made himself noticed much more by not stopping at the finish line and pulling straight ahead, and in fact he is still talked about today.