PERTH (Australia) - THE Australian Navy and medical officials say the rescue of a French sailor in a round-the-world race was one of the most physically demanding they had ever completed.

French yachtsman Yann Elies was rescued Saturday from his boat 1,200 kilometres south of Perth after breaking his left thighbone during the Vendee Globe round-the-world race on Thursday.

Elies had not had any pain relief for 48 hours until Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) doctor David McIlroy and officers from HMAS Arunta boarded his yacht on Saturday.

RFDS medical director Stephen Langford said on Sunday that McIlroy had described the rescue as 'probably the most exciting but also most physically demanding rescue he's ever done.'

'The thing that's different to this rescue compared to (the rescues of racing sailors) Isabelle Autissier and Tony Bullimore and those guys is that they were effectively ... fully-abled sailors who were being rescued from vessels that had broken,' Mr Langford said.

'Whereas in this case you're actually trying to take someone off who is ... seriously injured and are unable to help clamber off the boat themselves and that made it all the more difficult.'

British sailor Bullimore was rescued in 1997 and French yachtswoman Autissier in 1999 in two Australian Navy missions in the South Pacific Ocean during round-the-world races.

The Vendee Globe Web site said Elies was diagnosed with a fractured left femur and several broken ribs.

'In those sorts of conditions, really cramped, the boat banging around and he was trying to put in an anesthetic block to block the nerves in the yachtsman's leg to take away some of the pain, and then put some IV fluids in and some other pain relief,' Mr Langford said.

'They ... managed to splint his leg and get him in to a rescue stretcher and then had to transfer that stretcher across from the yacht to the inflatable boats with lines on each end. That's a difficult sort of thing.'

Local media reported that the Arunta was due to dock in Fremantle south of Perth on Monday.

The Vendee, a single-handed race for men and women without any stopovers, set off from Les Sables d'Olonne on Nov 9.

Thirty Open 60 race boats - high-tech carbon-fiber yachts built to be fast yet tough - began the race, but more than a third of the fleet has been forced to retire less than halfway into the race.

The Vendee takes the fleet around the three great capes - the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn - marking the southern tips of Africa, Australia and South America. --AP