It makes sense that Declan Rice didn’t start Arsenal’s Community Shield win against Man City on Sunday, given the busy summer he’s had. But it turns out that the England midfielder scraped together a little time to unwind before the new season – on a bloody massive yacht in the Mediterranean, naturally.
Rice dropped some of his seafaring holiday pictures on Instagram the other day, and watch spotters noted that he’d brought something suitably extravagant along for the ride. Specifically, the newly released Richard Mille RM 55-01 Automatic Winding in white Quartz TPT, a watch currently commanding around £560,000 on the secondary market.
If you’re going to wear a watch worth considerably more than the average UK house, a superyacht is probably one of the few places it risks looking relatively understated.
The RM 55-01 is the latest evolution of Richard Mille’s long-running collaboration with golfer Bubba Watson, and, despite that eye-watering price tag, the watch itself is surprisingly stripped back. Its white Quartz TPT case surrounds a heavily skeletonised movement, leaving much of the machinery on show.
RICHARD MILLE
Inside is Richard Mille’s calibre RMUL2, a manually wound movement built around a grade 5 titanium baseplate and bridges. That titanium is more commonly associated with aerospace engineering, but here it helps keep things light and tough – useful qualities for a watch designed with sport in mind.
There’s some serious engineering elsewhere, too. A free-sprung balance is designed to better withstand shocks, while two barrels distribute the movement’s stored energy rather than leaving one to do all the work. The result is a 55-hour power reserve.
Rice kept the rest of the look considerably more relaxed, pairing his half-a-million-pound wristwear with casual resort gear while cruising the Mediterranean.
Then again, when the watch costs £560,000, perhaps the outfit doesn’t need to do much of the talking.