The City of Rouen has just hammered the final nail in the coffin of the race, by announcing today that it would no longer authorise the event.

Against a backdrop of Covid and then financial difficulties, the event has been under fire for a few years now and with the arrival at the head of the town hall of a coalition formed between the PS and Ecology parties did not bode well for the future of the sporting event.

The decision was announced in a press release to no longer issue the authorisation to the Rouen Yacht Club to organise the event.

For more than six months now, we have been going through a serious energy crisis. The purchasing power of our fellow citizens is very strongly impacted, as are the budgets of municipalities. Significant efforts are required of everyone, households, communities, companies, especially in terms of energy sobriety. We must be exemplary. Global warming, so tragically visible this summer through major and recurrent episodes of heat waves, also has consequences and pushes us to act.

This difficult context, in which we find ourselves today, will unfortunately last. It requires making choices. This is the reason the City of Rouen has decided to no longer issue the authorisation to the Rouen Yacht Club to organize the 24h motorboat.

After the announcement, the Rouen Yacht Club reacted by saying

The organisers of the 24 Heures Motonautiques de Rouen are stunned by the announcement of the City of Rouen of its intention to no longer authorise the sporting event in the name of the climate and energy crisis.

Jérémy Brisset, Vice-President of the Rouen Yacht Club seen here celebrating their team’s recent victory at the 2022 Orlen Necko UIM World Circuit Endurance Championships in Augustów, Poland said

We’re a bit on our ass at the moment as we have just heard the news. The incomprehension is all the greater because we had a meeting a month ago with the town hall. We asked them if we could communicate about the 2023 event and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said ‘yes.’  At that meeting, the municipality asked the club to prepare a plan for September. We thought it was shaping up well. Since the Greens are there, we know that it would be complicated but it looks like these past months we have been working for nothing.

PRW understands that a meeting of the Rouen Yacht Club board of Directors is scheduled to take place next week. The future of endurance racing will for sure be at the heart of the discussions.