Last year’s Sydney to Hobart overall winner says it’s highly improbable his yacht will become the first in over 50 years to go back-to-back in a race that’s been branded harder to pick than the winner of the Melbourne Cup.

No boat has claimed handicap honours in successive years since Freya did it in 1963-64-65. Balance was crowned the overall champion in 2015, but its owner-skipper, media personality Paul Clitheroe, is more concerned with just being the best of the nine TP52 boats in this year’s race.

“Unless you can beat the other eight TPs you’ve got no chance of winning the race,” Clitheroe said. “The real issue for us is to see how we go against our little group of identical boats. That’s our challenge and I reckon I’ll find them hard enough.

“If we happen to be the lead TP52 I’d be quite surprised by that and then you’d need wind conditions when a TP52 is going to win. So I think our chances are highly improbable.”

Picking an overall winner of the race is notoriously difficult. “With so many boats forming part of a very large, talented field, this is an event that’s even harder to pick than the winner of the Melbourne Cup,” Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore John Markos said.

Clitheroe reckons Rupert Henry’s consistently well performed JV62 Chinese Whisper, which finished fifth overall last year, is the boat to watch, based on her form in the first five races of the CYCA’s Blue Water pointscore.

“Most serious Hobart boats are doing the Blue Water pointscore,” Clitheroe said. “I always look to that because that’s across half a dozen ocean races and I consistently see Chinese Whisper at the top of that list.

“But if the conditions are wrong and it becomes a small boat race as it did two years ago, all of those small boats are well sailed and any of those 30 or 40 if the conditions are right, can win this race.”

Clitheroe wasn’t even planning to do the race again this year. “In fact I promised my wife I wouldn’t do Hobart this year after about half a dozen in a row,” Clitheroe said at Wednesday’s race launch.

“But even my wife agreed that not to defend would be a bit sort of inappropriate, so I”ve been given another leave pass.”