Vendée Globe - Around the world in 80 days
The toughest regatta in the world, as the Vendée Globe is known among single-handed yacht owners, has been held as an Olympiad since 1892 (the year Le Château des Carpathes by Jules Verne was published), so every four years, 2020/21 for the 8th time. The Golden Globe Race, which provides for a longer route every 50 years, reads much tougher in terms of numbers: at the first staging in 1968, one out of nine participants finished, and at the second attempt in 2018, as many as five out of 17 did so after more than 212 days. That the sailing regatta currently on its last leg is harmless is not only evident from the fact that the expected finish in Vendée is lower than the French author of science fiction and adventure novels had predicted, but also that there is massive cheating going on.
In fact, the world is not being circumnavigated transversely - i.e. more along the equator - as we would imagine, but only longitudinally, once down the Atlantic, around Antarctica and back up to the French west coast, instead of, for example, back up the Pacific and past the North Pole - THAT would be a real circumnavigation.
But the biggest cheat is that the ACC - not a headache remedy, but something similar, namely the Antarctic Circumpolar Current - can be used according to the rules. Antarctic Circumpolar Current) - may be used, which even without wind, as we know from Finding Nemo, which plays under water, sends floating cupboard walls or turtles, which are not known for their speed, past Cape Leeowin and Cape Horn in record time, basically downstream - if the oceans were rivers.
And here we also find the definition of the terms: science fiction are stories (fiction, not to be confused with history) told against a scientific background (science). Verne wrote science fiction and adventure novels set in this world. Yes, world and space means the planet and everything around it, including the atmosphere, stratosphere, ozone hole and the moon that orbit it; space or cosmos means something else. So if someone reports sailing around Antarctica because they are riding the ACC, that is science fiction.
After all, the rules state, for example, that the route is predefined, that you are not allowed to go ashore and that you are not allowed to accept any outside help. One thing leads to another: since the route leads completely through the Atlantic and the Southern Ocean, it is neither possible to go ashore nor to claim the assistance of a lock attendant, as would be the case in a real transverse crossing of the Panama or Suez Canal.
In contrast, stories like Star Wars can at best be assigned to the genre of fantasy, if it did not already voluntarily call itself a fairy tale, but at least have a socially historical core. Fans of Star Trek, on the other hand, are not aware of this; they firmly maintain that if something has to do with spaceships and the future, that determines its classification as sci-fi. Indiana Jones, as an interdisciplinary archaeologist, is more a figure of science stories, or at least adventurers in its undisputed definition. From this point of view, a story like people with spontaneous but absurd mutations being educated at a school by a self-proclaimed professor whose name begins with an X is clearly science fiction, although comics do not ask about realism or probability. After all, neither did Jules Verne, perhaps he should have actually travelled to the centre of the earth first and met Captain Nemo.
This brings us full circle: the name of the little clownfish is of course inspired by the character from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Vendée Globe is actually over 20,000 nautical miles long - almost a circumnavigation - in 80 days.