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A sailing podcast for racing sailors everywhere. Exclusive interviews with the sport's top names. Presented by British sailing journalist Justin Chisholm.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're listening to the Yacht Racing Live podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: The show for racing sailors everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Featuring exclusive stories and interviews from across the world of competitive sailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hosted by British sailing journalist Justin Chishoff, available wherever you get your pocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Yacht Racing Lies podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Justin Chasholm, and on this episode, I sit down with USA, sale GP team boss Mike Buckley for a frank and open chat about his experience of leading a team in sale GP, including the importance of resilience and thick skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: The team's challenges on the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: The impacts of bringing in new sailors.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the fundamental difference between America's Cup and Selji P teams, as well as his plans for the team's medium and long-term future.
[SPEAKER_00]: To Mike, welcome to the Yacht Racing live at Podcaster Festival.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about this team, where was this team born?
[SPEAKER_00]: We've become aware of it in the last kind of season and a half of Selji P, but I'm aware the background to the core of this team goes back a lot further.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think there's obviously parallels between what I've done or what our groups done in the past, but obviously, you know, when we saw the growth of sale GP and what Larry and Russell their vision and what they've created in five short years and kind of the first opportunity to create a business in our sport, you know, I immediately want to
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, relationships are everything and people that, you know, we've done things within the past.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we put together a really awesome group, Ryan McKellen and I brought in a bunch of private equity, Mark Lazarus and Avenue Capital.
[SPEAKER_02]: a bunch of celebrities to help get the the message out the word out and you know I think now it's about how it's about building something that you know it's sustainable over the you know till the end of time really yeah you make it sounds straightforward the timeline
[SPEAKER_00]: is quite long for you to create this.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you go about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: You say you spotted sales your peers in opportunity, but you can't just click your fingers and it all works.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think, uh...
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, kind of, I've always been really inspired by contrapreneurs and athletes and come back stories and the American dream and, you know, it's no secret Taylor and I tried to put our own America's Cup campaigns together.
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you know, fell short twice for various reasons.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I think it's easy in the moment to look at it as a failure but without those learnings and those steps, there's no chance we're here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and yeah, there's been nothing straightforward about about what we've done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, you're kind of, uh, making it up as you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, that's, that's pretty applicable to racing a sailboat, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You, uh, you go with what you see and,
[SPEAKER_02]: You try not to make the same mistake twice, and if you can get, if you can, you know, really achieve that, you can, you can do pretty well, and I think that's how we try to run our business.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not trying to run it perfectly.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're trying to push the boundaries, and, but not make the same mistake twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: You came out of that America's Cup.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second campaign, the Stars and Stripes, I must have been pretty bruising to come out of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you saw CELGP, count of emerging, just how different was it between the challenges of putting the two campaigns together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it definitely was challenging.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, my mom always said when I was a kid that everything happens for a reason, I think that's hard to understand in the moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when the thing didn't go your way, what's the reason?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this feels horrible, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting ripped by X, Y, and Z. But I think when your mission is, you know, when you're kind of sure of what your mission is,
[SPEAKER_02]: makes it easier to kind of brush those moments off and dust yourself up and get back up and try again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that that's Larry Ellison shared and become the, you know, wealthiest person in the world by, you know, not making some missteps and trying to push some boundaries and betting on himself, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's essentially what he's done as well as anyone in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I think that's that's a good lesson.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't unique in a way, you're a professional sailor who is also created a strong presence on the business side of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: That seemed to me watching your progress to be a very deliberate thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You clearly still love the racing, but the business side of it really appeals to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no... Yeah, I love both of it, both sides, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I think a lot of people
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of chat about, you know, the sailing and the business and it must be hard and you know it's certainly it is hard but you know when you when you love what you do it's actually not that hard right I got off a plane from Singapore an hour before you know the the training window opened yesterday because we had sponsor meetings down there right but it was
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're having the time of our lives, but we're not satisfied with where we are in our business or our sport, you know, where we are in the sporting side, you know, and there's, I think a misconception that we're, you know, content with where we are, we're not at all, but it doesn't mean we can't have fun on the journey, because if it's not fun, what's the point?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get in to a little bit of the life of Mike Buckley because it sounds pretty interesting, but just tell me back, you and Taylor, how far back do you go?
[SPEAKER_02]: We go, I don't know the year, but he had just graduated from college and he was starting a mattress and having some, you know, a great success in college and it was having some success mattressing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember who it was to introduce us, but somebody said, hey, can you go do tactics for this young guy who's crushing it, but could use, you know, maybe a little bit of, you know, somebody who's a little bit further along on the professional side, I said, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we started sailing and I think at the time I think his girlfriend broke up with them like an hour before we were supposed to go racing.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a mass.
[SPEAKER_02]: The two of us had egos.
[SPEAKER_02]: He didn't listen to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't listen to him.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a disaster.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got our butts kicked.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we said we'd never say it with each other again.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, kind of went one on our separate paths for a few years and then all of a sudden, again, both of us were having a little bit of success in our areas and somebody said, you know, I should bring it back together and I think like when we came back together, we were both a lot more mature and realized that, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, we could we could add value to each other's lives and, you know, on the water and off the water as friends and, you know, truly brothers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so yeah, it's been a, it's been a really fun ride.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and we want to congressional cup together.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably 10 years ago now and it's actually Tucker Thompson said to pull us aside and said, you two need to put America back in the America's cup, you know, if, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: If Oracle Team USA doesn't win in Bermuda, you guys should go after it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we certainly didn't know, we didn't know, but we said, you know, this sounds like a great idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: And jumped in, yeah, to feet without knowing how deep it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I wouldn't change it if, you know, again, if I could.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the difference between
[SPEAKER_00]: The success you've had building this salg p-team commercially finding the backers and the problems you had with the America's Cup side of things because at the end of the day you had everything but the money really.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, they're, they're two different beasts.
[SPEAKER_02]: A sale GP is truly is a business, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a lot of people say, you know, oh, did you, you know, where did you get funding?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's, it's not about funding.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about people that invested in a business.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, America's cop at least in the U.S.
[SPEAKER_02]: has been about patronage, you know, people that,
[SPEAKER_02]: want to donate money to fill fill their dreams or your dreams or whatever it may be to totally different business models.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I sold, you know, my partner is in my investors and is, you know, a profit of an eventual profitable business.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's pretty unique, not just in sailing but sport, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of these
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of these sports properties aren't cash flow positive, but their valuations are rising by the billion.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we can generate positive cash flow through corporate sponsorship, that's a great business model and B.
[SPEAKER_02]: the team will be here long after we're gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is traditional sports in a nutshell, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: When the Celtics sell their franchise to the new ownership group, the Celtics don't shut off.
[SPEAKER_02]: They keep going.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that that's what...
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the America's Cup, which really tricky is, you know, a wealthy individual decides that they don't want to do it anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the team just goes away.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't get passed to the next ownership group, because it's not really an ownership group.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I wouldn't label it like, we've been massively successful yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we've, uh, we've made progress, but we're certainly not where, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel comfortable saying we've been successful, you know, on and off the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get a lot of criticism because of the results, but and I said this, I do a podcast with Magnus Wheatley and I said, in a lot of ways, the American team is virtually the perfect set-up that seems exactly what Russell and Larry were looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: if you could get the results of, then you would be the perfect thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that how you see it?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if perfect exists, but I'm going to say when we get the results, not if, but yeah, I think it's a recipe that can be very successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: back in the hey day of the america's couple dentists conner in the u.s.
[SPEAKER_02]: he inspired our country right i mean it was before my time i was a i was a little kid but i i still find people that you know say oh you know dentists dentists conner guys still around right and then when he put america you know a national tv and we all got up to watch it because he inspired people and that's why we love athletes and and we love their stories uh so
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, yeah, I'm pretty passionate about growing American sailing globally.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's this saying that there's not enough talent.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's BS.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not enough opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: and without opportunity, it's very hard to get experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're finding that in SLGP is, you don't get many training days.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're trying to gain an inch.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're trying to make sure everybody's confident stays up as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mine is well-go-home if you don't have confidence.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's going to be a process.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think if you look at other sports and NFL or soccer team or whatever,
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody just wins, just like that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to build that culture and, or nobody's bigger than the next person, and it's not easy, and there's no magic recipe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know everybody wants to win tomorrow and so do we.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, it's a process, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you build this convert, my belief is that if you build this sustainable business, it will allow for generations of opportunity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we're not sitting there having this conversation about talent or results because we've built what New Zealand has built, you know, grant all in what he's built as a commercial vehicle.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just, it's always next person up because they don't shut off at the end of the America's Cup.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, that's not a magical
[SPEAKER_02]: thing it's it's it's me it's very obvious uh and that's why they have so much experience right I mean you know Peter Burling could go to the best sailor in the world goes to another team and New Zealand just grabs the next person could I and that's that takes a long time to build right they've been going out of for 20 30 years where a year and a half into this um so what's the response been
[SPEAKER_00]: can you give us some sort of measure of the response that you get from the American public because sailing, it's still a bit of a niche thing isn't it in the States and it's frustrating to everybody involved.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I think there's two totally different audiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's the traditional sailing audience, you know, and I read some of it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're not very nice about, you know, what they say, but
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't read a ton of people that could do any better writing anything bad about us, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't see Tom Slingsby writing derogatory things on our social media, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If he was doing that, he'd be like, oh man, I better go figure out why.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think, you know, sitting in their shoes, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody likes change until it's proven and we haven't proved yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm okay with their position.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to prove it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once we do that, I think that demographic will flip for 180 like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the non-sailing audience, I think they, you know, what they see what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they think is quite cool, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They see Tommy Hill figure, they see Amazon, they see what bringing fashion in, and they see trying to bring some cool factor so that not just traditional sailors can feel like they have a place in our sport, and there's a lifestyle element, and you know, people can come and have fun whether their team wins or loses.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's at least in American sports, lifestyle has become such a part of the experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: And every fan wants their team to win, don't get me wrong, and every team wants to win, and every athlete wants to win, every owner wants to win.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you can develop something where when your team is not winning, that the fans are still having a great experience, that's when your business value goes through the roof.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you get besieged with young sailors in the U.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: reaching out to you saying I want to be part of this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that's, you know, when you get a, when you get a taxed or you see a social media post from, from some young opticator, you know, sailing whatever kind of boat saying, you know, hey, we met you at the XYZ race and it was, it was, you know, the best day and we love it and done it, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: that makes up for a thousand negative comments like that right like that's the
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no better feeling, and that could literally squash every negative comment.
[SPEAKER_02]: One kid, you know, and I think I want to be the leader in that, because that we can control.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can't control our results.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can control how hard we work.
[SPEAKER_02]: We control, you know, the effort we put in and, you know, trying to improve the best we can, but it's gonna take time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can control how we treat people that we need.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can control if we inspire kids, you know, that sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to make sure that we're winning that area of our of our business as we improve on the sporting side.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess the other thing is that whilst the house has been a lot of negative comments and some of it pretty fits reality, I was quite shocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: You must read different websites in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see any of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and I'm not just kidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm not trying to rev it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to me, it just people care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, people don't do that casually.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means they care about the fact that the team's not doing well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it will be worse for you as a team.
[SPEAKER_00]: If no, be really, no, be commented.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, be noticed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, again, like, I think, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't expect people to just support us just because, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that.
[SPEAKER_02]: think early on in our america's cup days we kind of thought they would just support us just because and then you you know you start to start to think about it like what's the why you know we need to exchange value to have a fan you actually have to exchange there's has to be some sort of exchange of value right i have to do something for you to care about me right what what's that thing i can't just be the shirt you know uh it's got to be
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're trying to build that, and I think, you know, a lot of those people, I think if they spent more time with us and understood what we're trying to build, I think they'd have a little bit of a different opinion of
[SPEAKER_02]: us and our team but you know there's on average there's 840,000 people that watch us on CBS every month and you know there's 20 that right negative comments.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's good what I looking at it you know so I think I think it's important not to lose sight of that and you've got to have thick skin you put yourself out in the public
[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, if you got to be, you got to be able to take it and, um, yeah, that's, I think that's, uh, that's the nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we just watched the Ryder Cup, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, American fans were absolutely horrible to the European team and, and put the European team had real thick skin and they whipped our butt, you know, and, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind of the, that's the negative side of, of professional sports.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: might take me back to when you first started sailing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about inspiring kids now to get involved in the sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: What inspired you by that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I, you know, I think when I was, when I was really little my mom, uh, she always loved the water, uh, she would always find a way to get me to a beach, you know, it was usually in between jobs or something like that and she loved collecting sea shells and just,
[SPEAKER_02]: random stuff around the water.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember that since I was a baby and I think we had like somebody let us borrow some like real POS little wooden thing and should tie rope to it and push me out
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I liked it, but it was like, you know, I liked being out the water, and then I was very, very lucky that sports got me into a boarding school, and that boarding school happened to have an awesome sailing team.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of saw how those kids carried themselves, and there was a lot of buzz around the sailing team, which I'd never really seen before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I tried, I decided I would try it, my sophomore year, and
[SPEAKER_02]: Realize that wasn't very good at hockey or football.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I put that same energy in a sailing, that same kind of competitive energy that maybe that could be my meal ticket.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of the kids, it was there, hobby.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, it was how I was gonna get into college.
[SPEAKER_02]: And from there, it was how I was gonna make money.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I feel like I owe it to other kids to spread the message to chase their dreams, because I don't actually care if they chase their dreams and sailing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I grew up with a mom that worked three jobs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I never met my dad.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were, you know, behind on rent, most of my childhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty lucky to be part of a group that just bought an asset from Larry Ellison, you know, and I don't need my name to be attached to that at all, but I hope some kid can hear this or read a story about somebody and say, wow, fly.
[SPEAKER_02]: get my butt off the couch and work my butt off.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can go get mine, whatever that whatever that is, whatever that thing is, playing the violin, owning a hundred McDonald's, whatever, doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of my ammo is, yeah, anything possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about the investment team, how much reporting back do you do to those guys?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they kind of hands on or are they fairly passive?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how does it work?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we have a board, you know, we are, our largest investor Avenue capitals very involved in our business, you know, which is a, which is a huge value at, to be able to pick up the phone and call Mark Lazarie.
[SPEAKER_02]: who, you know, bought an NBA team for a few hundred million dollars and sold it for a few billion and an NBA championship rebuilt an entire franchise.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a, you know, a huge tool that I don't take lightly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's, it's just like any other business, this isn't a campaign, this isn't charity, it's, you know, I'm responsible for creating enterprise value and profitability and everything in between.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess the question everybody would ask is how much do you feel the results impact to your ability as a CEO?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a deliver on whatever the KPIs use the creative for the business are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a big factor or no?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think it would certainly be easier if we were winning on the water, but with that being said, you know, there was a team that won the first three seasons, it didn't have any sponsors.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So winning certainly solves a lot of things in life and in any sport, in any business, I'm not going to sit here and say it's not doesn't impact us, but, you know, I think it comes into right now for us as buying into a vision of
[SPEAKER_02]: how we're going to create a team that's sustainable for a really long time, and how can our sponsors be part of that story?
[SPEAKER_02]: You see, in Formula One, the story that Google can tell with McLaren, and Hilton and McLaren, they came in when they were down here, and now they're dominating.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a hell of a story.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some other brands want to come in and grab the team that's right at the top, and they want to tell a different
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's, I think it's pretty impactful to be able to be part of that story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because storytelling is everything in sponsorship these days.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's a balance.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, I don't think there's a perfect rest of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to be sitting here from the top of the grid.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's not our reality today.
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be our eventual reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's going to take some work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me about life of Mike in between events.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does your life look like?
[SPEAKER_02]: The last six weeks have been pretty crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to think what I've done the last six weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where did you start?
[SPEAKER_02]: We started in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I went to the canned boat show to meet with some potential sponsors.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's some sponsors in Monaco and went to Santa Pei, flew from Strait from Santa Pei to Geneva, raised in Geneva, had a speaking engagement with Apex Group in Los San, which is in Switzerland, got to speak with Ray Lewis, who's a legendary American NFL player, one of the best of all time, flew to London for three days.
[SPEAKER_02]: Home, one to the rider, home for 20 hours, once the rider
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I flew to Singapore the next day for a bunch of sponsor meetings, and then I arrived here yesterday an hour before racing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's been the last kind of, I don't know, six weeks, but it's, yeah, it's a, it's a privilege to be able to do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a privilege to have a family at home that lets me do this, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's, you know, that's a biggest thing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I miss my kids growing up, my wife, and all that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a definite balance, but I think once we get our team kind of in a position, to, you know, that we feel a little more comfortable commercially and from a sporting side, then, you know, maybe you don't have to, maybe you don't have to do six straight weeks on the road.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I worry about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about the sailing a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You brought in a couple of new faces in the latter part of the season with Andrew Campbell and Mike Maninger joining the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to say from American magic, but we know them from American magic.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the thinking behind that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just new blood?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think we're always trying to improve our roster.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're always trying to improve our performance.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is no magic recipe because of the lack of training time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you bring somebody in, there's opportunity costs.
[SPEAKER_02]: You bring somebody in to have them sail for a few days.
[SPEAKER_02]: And somebody else doesn't sail those few days.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's an opportunity cost there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if it doesn't go the right way, you're actually further behind than keeping the same people.
[SPEAKER_02]: very very tricky to decide what the what the right thing to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we had a, you know, a couple unfortunate incidents the last year and a half and it felt like it was time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those guys, you know, suddenly became available.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I know them, you know, go way back with both of them and run out used to.
[SPEAKER_02]: race against each other in college and and Michael and I have race against each other for many years.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also want a world championship together with Taylor, Matt Tracy, you know, they're two guys that I have massive respect for and they also have a lot of foiling experience and in the in the America scope.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it, you know, it felt like the right time to to give
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they both then, you know, solid ads.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you know, kind of our first day.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got in a fairly big collision, which was,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, which was tough because we were having a we were having a a pretty good morning racing and but yeah I think you know those guys are the type of people that when they speak people listen new voices sometimes are a nice little recharge so yeah we're gonna see how it goes and you know I think we feel like we think we feel like we took a step forward with with them
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously bringing Mike in on the main sheet meant you had to lose Jeremy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a loss to the team?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he just disappear now from the team?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is he still involved?
[SPEAKER_00]: That must have been tough for you because again, you go back a long way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, Jeremy's, you know, is still involved, you know, I think with everything there's, there's given take.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeremy is a hell of a teammate.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a guy that anything we asked, he did, anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: He would have stood on his head on the boat for our team and he's also one of the most talented sailors I've ever been around, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: His whole family just
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so that was, that was really, really difficult.
[SPEAKER_02]: It'd be a lot easier to tell somebody that was a bad teammate that, you know, hey, we're making a change here, put to have to do it to somebody who I think is an unbelievable teammate, you know, that was, that was a phone call I'll never forget and yeah, it was tough,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, his response was, you know, I totally get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to keep working.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is in the end for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why he's a great teammate.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's not goodbye, it's see you later, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll find a way to get him involved in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of new talent swimming around the America's Cup and I suspect sell to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of young talent that hasn't come through the traditional row.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you envisage a scenario at some point where you would take one of those guys and put them on the helm of the American Bob?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think any position we're going to constantly try to improve that's professional sports.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the that's the business sport, it's it's very uncomfortable when you have to make those calls, but I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, make no mistake about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to try to improve every position on the boat every week.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it goes back to that opportunity cost.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, do you put a young, extremely talented kid in any position without experience?
[SPEAKER_02]: is dangerous, first off, and I think as the league grows, we're going to start to see a training facility.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now all of a sudden, you can go out and you can teach people and control environments.
[SPEAKER_02]: And hey, it's too windy, shut it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: out here you don't get to shut it down and you don't get to control what the other boats are doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So talent, I think talent only gets you so far and these top teams have been doing it since Burmuda, America's Cup.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been sailing the same boats, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean there are 1,500 days ahead.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that that's when you'll start to see the league get a lot younger when there's training facilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: you'll start to see what other sports do which is they want that younger so there's a runway to invest in that person you can invest in an athlete for five years or ten years that's that's worth kind of taking your licking early um so yeah we'll see but there's yeah there's a bunch of young talent in America um at the college level at the Olympic level you know the youth America's cup
[SPEAKER_02]: But I always go back to in maintain talent has never been our problem, experience and opportunity has been the problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's that's what we have to find to solve for.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's here in Caduce, they're getting a revved up for Saturday's racing, the music started so we'll start to close it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Final question, I guess, look you forward to season 6, what can we expect from the Americans?
[SPEAKER_00]: What goals are you going to set for yourself?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my stock boring answer is progress.
[SPEAKER_02]: What exactly does that mean, I, you know, I,
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see us move up the grid, I don't see any reason why we can't compete in the midfield next year or above.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to bring in more partners, partners help us a couple different ways, they help us obviously financially, but they also amplify the message of sale GK, you know, when Tommy Hill figure puts us on their Instagram 14 million people see it, you know, when,
[SPEAKER_02]: I put it on my Instagram, you know, it's not very many people see it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so more partners, hopefully more events, there's going to be one more team.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think it's an exciting time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, one of the measurement tools that I use is when people in a city that we're racing that didn't come to our race.
[SPEAKER_02]: are talking about our race.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's in these are really important metric.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that happened in New York City.
[SPEAKER_02]: This has happened at a lot of our races, but in New York City in particular where I live, I know how hard it is to make it as a person, as a business, and as an entertainment business, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can do.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's anything for anybody any hour of any day, 20 every day of the year, and this year sale GP people were talking about it that didn't come, and that is what gets me really excited for the future of our league and where our team can go.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, we got to just keep working.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to not listen to the noise.
[SPEAKER_02]: The best way to turn the noise in a different direction is to improve.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we're going to try to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And eventually we'll get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And good luck for yourself and for the rest of the team.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Appreciate the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it for this episode of the Yacht Racing Life podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will be back soon with another top name interview, but in the meantime, check out Yacht RacingLife.com for more great content from across the sailing world.