Mike Golding must be starting to feel like a lone British frigate at the Battle of Trafalgar. Despite the Vendee Globe having the strongest British contingent in its history, Golding is the only nonFrenchman in the top 10. During the first fortnight of the solo nonstop round the world race, the French have monopolised the first six places, a reflection of the gap in experience and skill between the home nation and the rest.

A move to the west to position himself favourably for the passage through the notoriously fickle winds of the Doldrums slightly back-fired for the British skipper as the pace of the leading trio to the east - Loick Peyron (Gitana 80), Seb Josse (BT Team Ellen) and Vincent Riou (PRB) – barely slackened. Behind Golding lie Brian Thompson in Bahrain Team Pindar, Sam Davies (Roxy) and Dee Caffari (Aviva), all of whom are experiencing their first Vendee.

The good news for Golding is that, though he slipped down a couple of places crossing the Equator, he is almost exactly the same distance behind the leader as he was four years ago when last-minute breakage prevented him from winning the race. Golding will be relying on regaining the miles through the South Atlantic this week and when the fleet turn into the Southern Ocean, the heart of the race.

In spirit and reality, though, this remains a French race. “In France, in terms of the culture, this kind of solo sailing brings more dreams and emotions for the young generation,” says Gilles Chiorri, the head of events at OC Group and an accomplished French solo sailor. “Yes, we have some good Olympic sailors and we know the America’s Cup, but when you learn to sail you want to be a solo sailor.”

A government-funded Academy of Excellence has been set up at Port La Foret on the Breton coast, from which five of the top six skippers in this Vendee have graduated. Only the best French sailors are admitted to the school, where they learn not just the technical aspects of solo sailing but meteorology, electronics and psychology.

La Forêt has also become a centre for technological development, where saving weight on board becomes an art form and keeping secrets an impossibility. By agreeing to share technology in the lead-up to the race, Golding and Caffari were only doing what the French have done informally for years.

Yet the roots of the French supremacy lie much deeper. In 1998, at the height of the World Cup in France, legendary French sailor Eric Tabarly was lost overboard in the Irish Sea, his body washed up on the Welsh coast three weeks later. The story knocked the football off the front pages of L’Equipe, the national sports daily, and helps to explain why, in the weeks before the start of the 2008 Vendee, spectators thronged the quayside of Les Sables d’Olonne to catch a glimpse of some true heroes. “It’s like the people are seeing ghosts almost, it’s very emotional for them,” says Chiorri. “Yet I believe 85% of them have never been on the sea in their lives. It is something out of their world, yet they can understand it.”

French news programmes carry a three-minute race report every night; L’Equipe carries a page of news each day. Almost all French skippers have served their apprenticeship on the Figaro, a historic solo race from France to Ireland, Spain and back. Chiorri has competed eight times on the Figaro and has also raced solo across the Atlantic in the Artemis Transat from Plymouth to Boston.

Peyron, the leader in the Vendee, has completed 18 solo crossings of the Atlantic. When the fleet left Les Sables two weeks ago, the French were sailing in waters they knew intimately from their days in the Figaro. “The Figaro is the primary school of solo sailing,” says Chiorri. “There are 50 boats on the startline, so it’s very competitive. It’s like a pro-am, you start as an amateur, then you get better and become a professional. Step by step you can build up a network and get some finance.” Josse, for example, sailing BT for Ellen MacArthur’s British-based team, won a competition for one year’s Figaro budget – about £200,000 – run annually by the French bank Credit Agricole.

Both MacArthur and Davies spent time racing in the Figaro class before graduating to the Vendee. The problem for the next generation of British solo sailors is how to break into it. “If you want to beat the French at their own game, you have to use French sails, use their technology and race against them,” says Phil Sharp, at 27 one of the youngest and most talented of the next generation of British skippers. Sharp competed in the Figaro double-handed transatlantic race earlier this year and was astonished at the steepness of the learning curve.

“There’s not one minute you can’t be on the ball,” he says. “If you get a wind shift, you’ve got to take it. If you leave it 20 minutes, you will lose time and never make it up again. It was unlike any racing I’d done before.”

Sharp is seeking sponsors for an Open 60 campaign leading up to the Vendee in 2012. “If you walk into the boardroom of any company in France, they will know about the Vendee,” he says. “In the UK, you’ve probably got to find someone who’s interested in sailing and then hope they might know about the Vendee.”

The emphasis is beginning to change within the ranks of French sailors. Though still young, Josse has already established himself as a top-class yachtsman across a number of disciplines. While many of the older generation such as Roland Jourdain or Peyron are shorthanded specialists, Josse skippered ABN Amro Two in the Volvo Ocean Race, won the Fastnet and claimed the Jules Verne Trophy round-the-world record on board the maxi-catamaran Orange.

Golding is racing mile for mile against the best in the world. If he could win the Vendee, the 48-year-old could retire happily and the race would enter a new phase. “A British win would change the development of the race in a good way,” says Chiorri. France, though, would go into spasm.

French route to success

WHY THE FRENCH ARE SO GOOD AT SINGLE-HANDED SAILING

1 Culture The Vendee Globe is regarded as more important than the Olympics or the America’s Cup
2 Experience French solo sailors are competing against each other from a young age and honing their skills in Transatlantic and Figaro races
3 Training The government funds national sailing schools and the national academy of excellence at Port La Foret, the finishing school for the best solo sailors
4 Finance Adventure sailing attracts regular coverage in national newspapers and on television, which brings sponsors to the sport
5 The Figaro class A ferociously competitive series of races in France sailed in identical boats that put the emphasis on the skills of the skippers rather than technology
6 Eric Tabarly He was a national hero in France and inspired a whole generation of young sailors