Sailing: Peyron's prizeless moment: Stuart Alexander on the round-the-world sailor who returned home to find the trophy cupboard was bare

BRUNO PEYRON claimed the Jules Verne Trophy yesterday as he skippered the first boat to sail around the world in 80 days. 'It's gigantic, it's miraculous, it's all we wanted, it's magic,' Peyron said after he and his four-man crew completed their journey in 79 days six hours and 16 minutes, the moment of triumph marred only by a small technical detail: the trophy itself is not finished.

'Bruno Peyron has taken us a bit by surprise. The Jules Verne trophy is not ready yet,' Titouan Lamazou, the Frenchman who came up with the idea of the race, said. 'The trophy is a sculpture by the American artist Tom Shannon, who was chosen following a competition by the Ministry of Culture. But he hasn't quite finished it.'

The sculpture, a carved ship floating above a magnetic plaque, will be put on display at the French Maritime Museum with Peyron's name engraved on it, while the circumnavigator himself will have to make do with a replica.

Peyron's 85ft catamaran Commodore Explorer re- crossed the imaginary start and finish line between the Isle of Ushant (off the Brittany coast just north-west of Brest) and the Lizard (on the south-west point of Cornwall) at 19.18 GMT last night, breaking the previous record by 30 days.

That record was held by Lamazou himself, who has now built a 143-foot schooner, and will attempt to reclaim the record at the end of this year. Presumably the trophy will be ready by then.