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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_02]: You're listening to the Yacht Racing Live podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: The show for Racing Sailors Everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: Featuring exclusive stories and interviews from across the world of competitive sailing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hosted by British sailing journalist Justin Chishoff, available wherever you get your pocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Yacht Racing Life podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: My guest, this time is Phil Kenard, CEO of the Canadian North Star Sale GP team.
[SPEAKER_00]: A successful dinghy sailor in his own right, Phil has a breadth of commercial experience that spans 10 years in Formula One, as well as an extended stint at Golf's PGA Tour, and a spell at Ben Ainsley's first America's Cup campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: who better than to quiz about the role of a sale GP CEO and to get the inside track on the Canadian teams roller coaster ride through season five and take a look ahead to their goals and aspirations for season six.
[SPEAKER_00]: Phil Cannard, welcome to the Yacht Racing Life podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about your role as the CEO of the North Star, the Canadian team, the Canadian Selju P team, which is known as North Star.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where are you talking to us from today?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, right now, I'm back in London as we're talking just before Christmas, so a year back back here with the family for a few weeks before we jet off again for the season six or 2020, six season in a couple weeks time.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not much gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the between the two seasons and you guys have had a busy, everybody's had a busy, 2025, season five season that just came to an end in Abu Dhabi last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the travel elements of it something you really enjoy?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've always enjoyed travel.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, throughout my career, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a bit, but I've always done a sort of traveling role, and I do enjoy that part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's always a limit though, there's a limit and there's life changes, and you know, I've never got young family now, you do have the
[SPEAKER_01]: the kind of the draw of being back home.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Sergei P is reasonably good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, everybody says, oh, you're on the road a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually, once a month, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And find me another role in the world where you don't have to travel once a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't find the travel too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the point about Abu Dhabi,
[SPEAKER_01]: gap to the next year is a good one because there was almost, I think, the same distance, the time between Cadiz and Abu Dhabi is there then was between Abu Dhabi and Perth and Ferrati and North Star in particular.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's something that we, we couldn't really go up or down unless we,
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless we started hitting everything in sight when we went to Aberdeau, we couldn't really go down and we couldn't go up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we took the view that we could have used that event as almost like a prequel to next season and treated as part of next season role in this season.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let's get into a bit of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to start off by just
[SPEAKER_00]: getting the positive history of your background because it's a pretty interesting combination of some competitive sailing at the beginning and then some pretty cool jobs within mainstream sport, Formula One, PGA, and the America's Cup as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: just talk us through, first of all, when did you get introduced to signing, where and where was that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that was probably as a kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the summer holidays, your parents just don't know what to do with you and you've got kind of weeks of end.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think my mom and dad packed me off on a sailing course, our way level one, probably as it was then, in the UK,
[SPEAKER_01]: down at Bealwater in Kent.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started sailing there and then was lucky enough to have the option of sailing when I was at school.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I got to about 13, I really, the bug bit and I started sailing three, four, five times a week almost.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, if it wasn't available at school, I did it on the weekends and I just really really got into it at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: love sailing as a youngster, it's the usual sort of toppers for 20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Laser sailing did call it a youth laser sailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was never particularly good at that, but then I saw, as I think most people did in the 90s, the Aussie 18-foot skip videos that were doing the rounds and watching Chris Nicholson and skilled at Ella Bashay and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of thought, I really want
[SPEAKER_01]: and a 49ers have just come out and I got, I got the opportunity to be going crew at 49er and then I was like, okay, this is where I need to be at because I love speed, I love speed and sailing and everything I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, I got into 49ers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you come from a sailing family?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was this a natural progression into sailing or were you the first
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, though, I was from a racing family, really.
[SPEAKER_01]: My father did some most bike racing when he was younger.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my brother has actually been a Lamon driver and F1 test driver.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're kind of more into the motorsport side as a family, but I just love sailing and the opportunity to cave me as a youngster to be in charge of your own destiny and make decisions and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's holds true for anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: when you get the opportunities that you wouldn't normally get in anywhere else to just go and control something on your own and make your own decisions as a teenager.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you headed off down the 49er route and that must have led you almost inevitably into Olympic campaigning.
[SPEAKER_00]: How far did you get down that route?
[SPEAKER_01]: We got a reasonable way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ended up with a number of different helmsman, but we got a couple of gold fleets at European Championships.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in the Olympic development squad for about three years, but then there was a kind of realization that
[SPEAKER_01]: come out of the 2004 games to kind of cycle and really, really actually commit to doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd have to be to Chris Draper and Stevie Morrison and all the rest of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, they, they were just so good at the time and being from the UK, you've got to mount into time because you've got to not only get your Olympic birth, but you've then got to be all of the other top teams within your country to get that.
[SPEAKER_01]: to get the nod to get it to the games.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I kind of thought, well, am I am I actually really going to beat these people?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or should I be doing something else with my with my time?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, I took the decision back in sort of 2005 that it most likely was going to be four years of my life, not waste.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't say wasted because it would have been great fun, but I'm properly wasn't going to beat those guys
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, that was, you were probably in Olympic campaigning in the 49ers at the very toughest time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That squad was incredible back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, it was, you know, you had Paul Pronatum was still doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was Alistair Ritches and a Pete Greenhouse, the Steven Bern, and
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there were a whole load of youth people coming through and Dylan hadn't even started sailing a 14-nighter at that point, but John Pink had and Rippee Cox, so yeah, I mean, our squad camps resembled a kind of a world championship every week down in Wayneville, which was immensely good for the level of the squad.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, again, if you've only got one birth, then you you have to have a good good hard look at yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: After I stopped 49er sailing, I tried to get a proper job.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when round the city of London, the thing was thinking, well, you know, maybe I should go into this, but that didn't really kind of film me with joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was lucky enough to get introduced to the head of marketing at the Williams F1.
[SPEAKER_01]: All B and W Williams F1 teams, it was at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I went along for what I just thought was a kind of a show round and not really an interview.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I turned up and it was the day after B and W had announced that they were leaving the Williams F1
[SPEAKER_01]: the sourdough team and a lot of the marketing personnel had seen their nice cushy jobs with their company BMW that was replaced at least three months and all of the extras that they had just suddenly disappear into smoke and they decided to move on and had a marketing needed about three or four people to fill jobs instantly and he said, when can you start?
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, well, well, next week, so yeah, I literally honestly landed on my feet there and started just looking after sponsors basically, which was something that I kind of dabbled in when I was sporting on a sailing and managed to get a couple of people to kind of help us out with the costs and whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually getting into the professional side of Formula 1, I was incredibly lucky and just grabbed it and ran with it basically and I was at Williams for for five years initially doing sponsorship servicing so looking after the current sponsors one of which actually was Aliands and Aliands were a sponsor at BMW Oracle in the 2007 America's Cup.
[SPEAKER_01]: see behind the scenes of how the commercial side of a cup operation works, but then very quickly transferred out into business development because I saw that that was where if you want your career to accelerate in commercial side of sport you need to be doing deals and going out and finding spots at so I moved it to that pretty quickly and yeah and love to my time working at Williams it's still still the team that's close to my heart the great bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you stayed in Formula One, you went to Lotus as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I heard that you were in Formula One for about 10 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I did 10 years at the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know whether I intended to do 10 years in it, but I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I actually left Williams and went to work for a marketing agency, which was run by Zapp Brown, who now runs McLean.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I worked for Zapp for a year, which was an amazing experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, talking in awful lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I missed the opportunity for the being part of an actual sports team.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think being part of an agency was great and an absolute, uh, learning, grandtastic learning experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do love being part of the team and the opportunity to go to
[SPEAKER_01]: got Kenny Riken and on board as their driver, you know, that the famous leave me alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what I'm doing kind of quote because was from when I was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it was great to be back in that one, you know, with a team for another four years or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he got head hunted back into sailing with, so Keith Mills called you and brought you back in to Ben Ainsley's fledgling team as it was back then two campaigns with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, just the one campaign with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I joined them and I was working with Ben and Joe Grindley for the 2017 Cup in Bermuda.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I started working with them from 2013 onwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, all of the commercial development of that team from what was a very small lock up in Whiteleath, down in Nessahanton to the big base that we then,
[SPEAKER_01]: ended up having importance, and it was amazing because I think, and CJ has said this as well, that there comes a point where if there's going to be a British America's Cup Challenger, you are a Brit, then you kick yourself if you weren't part of it, and it would, you know, what happens if it went on to be successful?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were parts of that campaign that were fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we won the World Series in Japan, and I remember that, you know, with
[SPEAKER_01]: the team felt like they were absolutely on top of the world and could do no wrong at that point and we were going to the car but we were going to smash it and there was an amazing feeling within that team so it was a great time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously the boat wasn't quite where it needed to be and obviously the Kiwis came out with their cycles which blew everyone away but yeah it was a fantastic experience and
[SPEAKER_01]: very entrepreneurial and starting from scratch.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's when we come on to north start, that's kind of where we're at with that team at the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was an opportunity to really roll up your sleeves and whatever needed doing, just you have to get on and do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's been incredibly exciting for anybody, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have I missed out a stage with the PGA tour before that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or was it after that?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, so after 2017, I sat down with Ben actually in Bermuda and said he said look, would you want to continue and go for the next cup and you know, wherever it happens to be because we didn't know at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was looking pretty clear that it was going to end
[SPEAKER_01]: My honest opinion was that we'd already resigned quite a lot of the sponsors that we would go to need for the next campaign and what obviously then end up happening with any awesome Jim Rackliffe was different, but we had resigned the likes of Land Rover and others and I was looking at this thinking, well, what am I actually going to be doing for the next?
[SPEAKER_01]: two, three, four years, and this is going to be mentally challenging for me, even though my heart says yes, but am I going to be moving myself forward in my career?
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time I had been approached by the US PGA tour who were looking for somebody who hadn't come from the traditional golfing background to run their business development function in Europe, Middle East,
[SPEAKER_01]: for me to learn another sport, to lead a team for the first time and lead an organisation or at least a part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just continue my learning journey if you like.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of said, thank you to Bernan, you know, we're still good, good friends, and we talk very often.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great relationship from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was the right time for me to go on, move on and learn something again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of this experience, just I'm listening to you talking about the people and the sports and the exposure to all of that, it sets you up perfectly for sales you peak coming along.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not when I knew it at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that you knew it at the time, no, but I'm beginning to think
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look at the CEO's that, well, then sales GP, I think more and more it's going to be important who's in these roles, who's got the experience, who's got the experience to shape teams because it's more than just the sailing now, isn't it, it's everything counts.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, I think these Sergei P is, is obviously still very young.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did actually go to the launch of Sergei P back in, from the 18th, by average, that launch yeah, I was there at the time, and I actually kicked myself, and I was thinking, God, do I make the wrong decision to go and work for the PGA tour of the moment?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, there's this new team starting, and that's, that's kind of what I want to do eventually.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so,
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's still very young, and it's only five years or five seasons old, longer because of COVID.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's still only five seasons old, and it's got a huge amount of growing still to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I think everyone will see is that the individual teams and styles will start taking on more of their own.
[SPEAKER_01]: identity, more of their own operations, they will grow as businesses within their own right, and as teams within their own right, within self-GP, because the genius of self-GP was the Larry Russell started it with all these teams being owned by the league, and they've now subsequently started selling them off, and the ecosystem that self-GP has now is getting larger and larger, and there's just so much opportunity in it that the teams are going to start to grab and take
[SPEAKER_01]: having people on every team who can just keep them their eyes open and wide to all opportunities that think is going to be good, whilst we're still remaining true to the core sporting element of what the sports team actually needs to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how did it come about?
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you get involved with the Canadian teams?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then and it's evolved into being Melstar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think towards the beginning of last year, so 2020, sorry, yes, 2024.
[SPEAKER_01]: So beginning of 2024, I'd been at the PGA Tour for longer than I was expecting to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd been through kind of three periods, one was pre-COVID, and then there was the COVID point, and then there was the post-COVID and the lift-golf period, where live in the PGA tour, we're going at it hammering tongs, and it was a very, very challenging place to be, and it
[SPEAKER_01]: challenging environment to work with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had come to the realization that probably time was running out on my time there and it was time to look for something new.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'd been personally kind of interested in looking at sports investment and you'd seen a lot of sports teams and entities being bought, sold, traded, whatever and
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt that it was a good opportunity or a good time to move into that world and combine my knowledge of sailing, taller one, golf, etc.
[SPEAKER_01]: within a sports investment vehicle.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was actually introduced to Dr. Greg Bailey by mutual acquaintance who works with him and was told me that Greg was looking to start this sports investment company and would I be interested
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'll just go with the S when somebody says they want to do that and the initial discussion was great was actually around Formula 1 and whether I would be able to help him to to get a small stake in an F1 team and we actually got a reasonable way down the road of.
[SPEAKER_01]: looking at Formula One, we have discussions with about three or four of the different teams, but I think when it came down to it, what Greg would have got for his investment with an F1 team, would have been a tiny minority setting, a no control or anything like that, no active role within the team, and Greg is, as I now know, he's a very active guy, he's a participant in all of
[SPEAKER_01]: He quickly came to the realization that probably wasn't the right thing, and then credit has to go to the German Sergei PT, who had reached out to Greg Viara a fund that they work with to offer him a minority stake in their team.
[SPEAKER_01]: and Greg ping this across to me and say, hey, you know, sailing, what do you think of this?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I looked there as I thought, actually, I do think sell GPs kind of interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going places, it's, you know, if you look to it as an investment proposition two or three years ago, it was a very risky one.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was unpreven yes valuations were much lower than they are now, but it was probably it was a bit of a punt if you were going to get into it at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas now, you know, especially post the the sale of the US team, it felt like the Lee had grown up very quickly and it become an investment class or a vehicle that sophisticated investors could actually
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not fully baked yet and it's still got a long way to go in its journey, but it was the right point where if you were entrepreneurial and if you were going to take a little bit of a risk on it, then it potentially could be a good investment.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we still have the same problem we have in F1 where if Greg had taken a minority stake in Germany,
[SPEAKER_01]: he wouldn't have been in control of the team and I said to him, this is great, but if you're looking at CRGP, why don't we go and have a look and see what else is available because they're, you know, just firstly we need to weigh out the pricing of what the German offer is and so we did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We went around and we actually spoke to the league who spoke to some other teams and it became clear that the Canadian team was for sale and Greg is from Toronto and so there was a kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: he could own the home team, which, you know, he always says this is not an ego play, it's not an emotional play, but the same time it is the home team and so for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he basically said, look, let's let's explore that further and very quickly, we got to a point with Russell where we had a term sheet, we had to start doing two diligence and we actually had that done during
[SPEAKER_01]: the Canadian event, the Halifax event of, of, uh, 2025.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, sorry, 24 was 24 wasn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we, we actually had that, you know, that was ongoing during that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just seeing the strength of feeling of fans and that event in Halifax.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that really convinced Craig that this was something that, that would be a good thing to get involved with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so very quickly after that, the deal was done and, and he acquired the
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I met a few of the Canadian fans along the way at a few events and they are very passionate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they've really, really adopted the sport and the league and get fully behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see not a bad time to be trying to convince the leader to join the league when you've got that kind of enthusiasm going on at an event in your home country.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're really looking forward to our facts next year as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's, I would say this because we're the Canadian team, but it's, I do think it's going to be one of the highlights of the season just because of the strength and the passion of the, of the fan base there and, you know, to get sold out very, very quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, you know, even though the size of the grandstanders,
[SPEAKER_01]: sort of gone up five times from what it was all tickets were and in 24.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, we're definitely looking forward to that and it's a sort of perfect amphitheater for the racing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we move on from from Greg, what exactly can you kind of sum up what it was he was looking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned sporting
[SPEAKER_01]: So Greg is a very, very interesting guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He made the bulk of his money through pharmaceuticals and biotech.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been, as he says, lucky enough to go, so I don't think it's luck.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he's very good at what he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's been lucky enough to go through, I think, two of the top 10 biotech deals of the last 10 years, from his companies that he's owned, and obviously done very, very well out of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's now absolutely,
[SPEAKER_01]: committed to helping people live longer and more healthily.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's all about longevity.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's now one of the world experts on longevity and he invests significantly of his own time and capital into this sort of plan that he's got to try to help people live better and longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: In essence is one of the sponsors on our boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll see that again next year.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're investing in biotech you the best way to do it is to divide your bets up along a number of different drugs and therapies.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're not going to put literally all your eggs in my basket, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to go and look at a whole suite of 10 or 12 or 15 different drugs that are in development and split them on the out that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what he needs to do is to find people who join him on that journey and will also come invest with him on various different things and he was looking at where can I find other people who will come and join me and join in this kind of journey to make people live longer and and you look at the high net worth sports that are out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's likely it's Formula 1 or it is
[SPEAKER_01]: think out of the relative price points of the investments, the cell GPs seem to be the option.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll do more place for him to start and to try and find co-investors.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's his main draw, is to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also to inspire people to kind of live longer and healthier and look after themselves and get out there, not just in sailing, but just get outdoors, get active and whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's very passionate about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it sounds like he's an active participant and all of this, he must be on site at the events regularly, I would guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he comes to probably to 75% of the events per year which is pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: So and we enjoy having him along.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a great sort of janitor of the team and yeah, he often be found in the hospitality or in the team base.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of this first season with the team, what's his food, what's his reaction, Ben, to the experience?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'll take you through the journey of the season, if you like, because it kind of has changed as we've gone through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we started off in Dubai last year, we didn't, frankly, didn't really know what was gonna happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We, I think we came six or seven, saw something in the first event, which was kind of okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, it wasn't, you know, a fantastic nor terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and then from there onwards, you know, we went to Auckland and suddenly the wheels fell off and we'd be, you know, because we had an injury to Billy, we couldn't sail for the whole of the Sunday.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were not yet in a position as a team where we were resilient enough in terms of the people who had seemed to be able to continue, we didn't have an app training on flight controllers and all kinds of other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was a real awakening that,
[SPEAKER_01]: goodness, this is actually really odd.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an awful lot of teams that are doing this and have been doing it very well for a long period of time and if we thought we were going to come in and just, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: blow everyone away, then, you know, not what we did, but, you know, we've suddenly realized this is going to be quite a journey to try to make this team competitive and consistently competitive.
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, Jal said something to me early in the season, he said, you chaffed a treat surgery P like one long regard to, and each event is one race, and you don't get upset when one goes badly, you don't get too excited when one goes well, but you just got
[SPEAKER_01]: because you just never know what's going to happen around the corner and that's actually been quite good advice for what then transpired, which was we went into Sydney and we made a lot of changes before Sydney lost here and suddenly we found ourselves just scraping onto the podium and that was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: First podium, really, really great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we nearly won it, which was one of the amazing things about the format.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to win every race, you just have to win.
[SPEAKER_01]: the last race in order to take an event.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a bit of a spring ball for us that we're not there yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the Aussie salesman incredible series.
[SPEAKER_01]: And frankly, they should have won probably won the event.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we kind of felt that we had something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me go to Los Angeles and manage to win the event and follow that up with a second place in San Francisco and it was a feeling that we're on to something here.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're only a few points off the top three in the championship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is going well, don't to New York and suddenly again, we're back crashing back down and we were trying to work out.
[SPEAKER_01]: exactly why this is the case, why it's so hard to put a consistent performance in across a lot of events.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's because of the data that you have in cell GP because any time a single team finds even a little tiny advantage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Within 20 minutes, every other team knows about it and they're training and they're finding a ways to copy you and to go another stage further.
[SPEAKER_01]: So no advantage is there for long and so that's where it's really hard to keep consistently at the front because everybody's trying hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all pushing super hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: They all want to win.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no slow catches out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems to throw the emphasis away from the silos a little bit and on to the data analysis, the Batroom analysis of all of this data that's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: and just to try and find, you know, lift up the floorboards and find these, this potential advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then that's got to be validated by the sailors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not an America's cup campaign where you can go and spend a week on the water trying something out to boat testing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get maybe a day, a few hours of time on the boat.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's hard to balance, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and actually we were having, we were laughing about the other day when we were in Abu Dhabi, the Friday of Abu Dhabi, and I think we've got 45 minutes of sailing, so how can you move yourself forwards as a team if you're actually sailing for 45 minutes a day, so it's incredibly difficult, I don't know the league of really pushing hard to get everyone more trading time, but with the logistics of getting the boats from one place to the next and next to the next.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost impossible to do, and so they've got some plans on how they're going to solve that, because, you know, that's something for future generations or not doing generations, but for our pipeline of talent.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really hard to get young people out of sailing, Olympic classes, wasmos, which is into an air-fifty because the step change is just so high and there isn't enough time to go and train, but back to your point, yes, data is really, really key and we took a view quite early on that
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe because I come from an F1 background where data is absolutely key, I said right we're going to need to have the data analyst, we're going to need to have somebody who's actually coding and creating our own tools and our own suite of tools that sit on top of the the Oracle data.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every team gets access to the same same Oracle data but it's what you do with it that matters and so how can we gain an advantage or at least keep
[SPEAKER_01]: get up to the level of that those powerhouse teams in Surgeep and what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we shortcut that get to that point and understand what nuances there are and what things are going to make a difference to us and we're not there yet, but we've made some significant advances on the data side of things across this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a lot of secrecy around what people are doing on that side of things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we talk in general terms about, you've invested in more and data analysis, but other the powerhouse seems as you call them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they doing something but you're not sure what it is?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there is quite a lot of secrecy around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's because, you know, cell GP as you said, it's not like America's company.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't go back in the shed and tweet your foils or tweet your boat or your cell plan or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't touch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you cannot touch your boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the beauties of cell GP is the equipment is,
[SPEAKER_01]: all the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the boats are equal weights.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all set up with the same geometry on the foils and the rubbers that, you know, that you cannot do anything to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is, it's all in how your team apply themselves and and that the way that they sell the boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
[SPEAKER_01]: finding little tiny bits of a vantage is really really hard to do, and it's one of the only areas that we've got in order to actually find, you know, performance of vantage over over other teams is in the data.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the added complication to all of that is that the playing feels never the same as it, it's a different of a new, different wing conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got different wing configurations.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've possibly got different foil and rudder configurations.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an awful lot for these teams, the sailors, the tech teams, to have to deal with, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a new line, you know, we're going to assassinate versus a New York versus an Abu Dhabi.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you wouldn't get a football team going to play in an octangl pitch one week and then try and get a pitch the next week and it feels like we're kind of doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what's sailing is right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the exciting bit of it is the number of
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, differences, there are, you know, within us, within our sport where there's the wind waves tied, you know, you name it, it all changes and you throw into that the configuration changes you just referred to and it, it's, it doesn't make it very, very challenging and the lead keep us on our toes, but Russell keeps on putting new bits of kit on the boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: in Abu Dhabi.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love that about surgery, but there's continually moving forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could just sit there and be the same boat year and year out, but it's not, and it's moving, which I think will keep it fresh in the long term as well, which is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the attractions, one of the benefits of CELGP is because it's effectively a privately owned organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Decisions can be made quickly and new ideas can be implemented very quickly and as compared to, obviously we're going to compare it with the Americas cut where change is pretty difficult within that competition.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think there's lots
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the stuff we've talked about now, lots of decisions to be made, lots of stuff to react to, that ultimately all filters back to the CEO role, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you describe
[SPEAKER_00]: what your role is.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were describing it to somebody who doesn't know the sport, how would you describe it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels sometimes like I don't have an awful lot of hats to wear, but you know, ultimately,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, as the CEO, you've got finance, legal, HR, marketing, and then the actual sporting side of the organization, all sort of reporting into you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But because we're a sport organization, I am finance, I am HR, I am legal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those three things I have to take care of all the time, and then the other areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: for example in marketing and sponsorship business development.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do have a team who are fantastic, who are working within a new start, doing those particular roles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then obviously the sporting side, we have under these jails, so jails runs that for our team and these got all of the the data analysis and the coaching side with LeBaijo.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then, you know, all the development of sailors under him as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we started, when we were starting, when we, when we acquired the team, everything flowed into me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was untenable.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we had to find ways to manage it better.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've, as, as our team is North Star, we've, we've actually made some quite big changes to how we're structured, between Cadiz and Abu Dhabi.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I know, Charles has, there's sort of referred to
[SPEAKER_01]: a bit of a slump and form that we had later on the year and and some of that is just tiny nuances but it's little things about who's responsible for what who take leadership, etc and and yeah I think we're making some good games there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it goes on with the team in between events because obviously the focus is on the event where people watch online, they watch on TV,
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a down period, you know, a couple of weeks, maybe, to the next event.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of conscious that most of these teams don't have a team base, you know, and most people aren't going back to a central point.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you operate within North Star?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question and yeah, we're definitely one of those things that doesn't have its own team base, you know, that the Canadian team has a majority of the people who work for it in Canada.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are some elsewhere, as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a marketing agenda, I've seen Italy with some of the majority of the year before she goes to countering the summer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are those based different places around the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm obviously based in the UK.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but we get together as much as we can online.
[SPEAKER_01]: We tend to split up into our various work streams whether that's marketing.
[SPEAKER_01]: the performance side of the team, the sailing side of team will meet and they will talk through what they've got to do and trying to find their gains etc.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got our data analysis team get together and then there's also the short careers while we keep in communication with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the road even more than the sailing team are because they arrived.
[SPEAKER_01]: four or five days in advance of the event of the lead three days after it's so they do travel a lot and so they're down time between events is far less but it's not I don't really feel like it's down time between the events and it feels like it's just to continue us churn at once there's always stuff to be done whether it is you know we're we're actually this is a bit of a um
[SPEAKER_01]: We're completely changing our delivery for our team next year, so we've been signing that off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both just been painted in Abu Dhabi, which is very exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just seeing pictures of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that whole process has been going on for a while now to make sure that it's exactly what we want.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's taken some time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, we're continuously out talking to potential sponsors and partners and investors in the team as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately,
[SPEAKER_01]: We're also trying to move the performance of the team on as well, and so one of the recent changes we made to the team was to bring in Ian Williams as a start coach.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's been working with Joe with Jiles and the rest of the team on specifically on that and how we can improve our starting performance going forwards as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a huge amount that goes on between all the events and that's before you can get to planning of next year and they're overall
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a huge amount of stuff and it seems to me it's only going to get busier as as the league develops.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get more teams and you know potentially more event, more events if the logistics allows for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much do you take a big picture view of things?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you've just completed your first full season.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're kind of a mid-table, you know, an upper-to-mid-table team at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there an overall plan that you can share, is it a...
[SPEAKER_00]: three-year plan, a five-year plan?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there's kind of splits between the sporting side of the team, sporting plan, and what we do there, and then a business plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sporting plan is obviously to what we turn become a powerhouse team in our own right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we want to be spoken of in the same breath as the Aussies, the Kiwis, and the breads.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're definitely the head and shoulders above everyone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll have been this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: especially if you look at the results and the statistics.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do we turn ourselves into that?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we need to do in order to do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what changes do we need to make?
[SPEAKER_01]: We have made a couple of changes to our teens for next year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing, nothing drastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't gone a completely wind trend.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have tweaked where tweaking was felt to be the right thing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully, from a performance point of view, we'll start the season in a really good spot because we've got
[SPEAKER_01]: a good level of kind of solidity and continuing with the bulk of the same team for next year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now actually if you look at the the kind of the results in Saudi P it's Saudi P does tend to reward teams who keep their grugged together and they keep learning as a group and they don't change things too often for the sake of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know you get a bit of a flash of excitement when somebody
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about building that group together and their core values, what they believe in as a team and so they're operating almost as one.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't get that overnight.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we felt it was important to keep the core of the team together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Confidence in everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that part, I think, is almost, I'm living to Charles and Joe to lead.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's that part.
[SPEAKER_01]: being taken care of, I hope, and they're going to be doing a great job on that this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: From the business point of view, we're definitely seeing this as a sort of 5-7-year kind of plan, and I kind of take a step up from just North Starb into what we want to do across our holding company.
[SPEAKER_01]: So from our point of view, we see CLGP as this incredible kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: center of the wheel, if you're like of of sailing, you know, it's it's the bright light in sailing at the moment, it's it's doing fantastic things, it's got a great future.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a whole load of stuff around sale GP which which needs some help and and there's opportunity, frankly, from from our point of view.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so
[SPEAKER_01]: We made a sort of three or four to significant moves we feel in the sport.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is to take a look at media and how media is actually covering sale GP and securing saying in general.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the main, there are there's there's relatively little media coverage of of why it goes on at CRGP.
[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly not enough for the excitement that actually you get whilst watching it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've we've sort of taken the the staff of creating a new business around sailing media, which will be launching in January.
[SPEAKER_01]: it's going to be called the foil and a number of different contributors are already signed up and part of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm quite excited to see how that goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's again, that's completely separate to North Star, but that's from a kind of a holding company point of view.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope there is that it just helps to lift the, the, the, the kind of exposure that CELGP gets and and America's cup and all the rest of the top level sailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm quite excited to see where that goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The third one is around, so if you've got team, team, and media, and then the third area is around events themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this goes back to my background with PGA Tour.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at PGA Tour, they've got a hundred and well, when I left, there was a 144 events a year on the PGA Tour, and associated tours.
[SPEAKER_01]: but they only run four of them a year.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the PGO tool actually doesn't run any events.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll run the players championship the tour championship, the president's carpin, a couple of others.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they don't run very many events.
[SPEAKER_01]: What they do do is they use individual promoters in various areas to actually take over running a beach and do individual events.
[SPEAKER_01]: and cell GP I think will end up moving in that direction because as cell GP grows and starts taking on more and more events, it's going to be practically impossible for one organisation to actually run 14, 15, 16 cell GP events a year, they'll have to use local promoters and so
[SPEAKER_01]: we would love to, as an organisation, to actually start to look at taking over the promotion of one or two events on the CRGP schedule and put those within our business.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they were having some discussions about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You may have noticed in Abu Dhabi we had Sports Illustrated on the Wing of our boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a new partnership which will formally be launched in a couple of weeks time, much as after the new year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sports Illustrated won the best party companies in the world,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Super Bowl, or you go to Miami F1, the evening party that you want to go to is the sports illustrated party.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've done a deal with them where we're going to be doing some sports illustrated parties around SOGP events going forwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first one of those is going to be in Dubai next year, up with some more in 2027.
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of excited about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just building out this ring around SOGP and what it can be.
[SPEAKER_01]: 2000 people in hospitality don't go, okay, what do we do now?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing there for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is kind of next to the next obvious step, and it's what you get when you go to a Formula One race, you go to the Ambulance or whatever it is afterwards, and there isn't that in SLGP.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're quite excited about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the final piece is we just announced a partnership with Waterspeed, and
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you may know water speed and what it is, it's kind of what the Strava for a water sport, so you can track your wing-foiling session or you can track your kite-foiling session, or whatever you're going to do with your sailing session and you share it with your friends, you can connect with your equipment manufacturers, you connect with your coach or your kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've become an equity partner in that business as well, and so that forms another part of our kind of strategy across the whole of sailing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it probably wasn't where we were initially looking to go to build out this whole business around sale GP but it's just as I go back to those entrepreneurial kind of opportunities that just come up and you think actually that would be a really good idea and it would add something to our propositions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, that's, you've really surprised me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was aware of the foil, but the other stuff for sure is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess it's a testament to SLGP success that these sort of opportunities are growing out around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: most people in its first season were a little skeptical whether it was going to survive beyond that.
[SPEAKER_00]: As each season has gone on I was a skeptic early on and I pretty quickly came around to you know to to recognizing it you know for what it is and it's it's tremendous to see the success of it in season five and going into season six with these sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: opportunities and these sort of conversations happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, for me, it's not, it's not traditional sailing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't look at it with a traditional sailing hat-up.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's not cow's week or, you know, anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it is something completely different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you look at it through the lens of an entertainment property that transcends sailing across into, you know, motor racing audiences or general sports audiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you suddenly, if you look at it through that lens, I think it gets,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, some of the items that they've have, they have about propulsion systems, for example, for light airs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, I'm a traditional sailor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that fills me with dread that I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll give it a go because, you know, at the same time, I used Love Formula 1 before DRS, and I thought the idea of having DRS as a button-new press and the rear wing opens, and you go faster and make an overtake.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not overtaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just pushed to pass.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, you know, but actually it's turned Formula 1 into a much bigger sport, something that people, you know, engage with more and they do like watching overtaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's part of the strategy of when you use it, how you use it, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to look up CRGP as giving it a go, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're trying different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some will work some way, but it's worth giving a go and seeing what that looks like because if you can open up the calendar to venues that aren't blessed with 15, 20, not wins every single day, metronomically, then it just gives you more opportunity from a commercial basis to grow it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also to keep that schedule going throughout the year,
[SPEAKER_01]: There's very few venues you can go to in this November and December that aren't in Australian New Zealand.
[SPEAKER_01]: We go to those already.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you need to find other venues around the world that will work and I do applaud CLGP for trying things and seeing whether it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it is the best chance for sailing to be a commercially viable product.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you say, I mean, lots of people complained about Abu Dhabi and Dubai has been like when venues, you just got to look at the social media feeds to see the victory all that was thrown at the league.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is both from a commercial point of view, and just a practical point of view, as you say,
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the venues that have to be incorporated into the calendar and that's not going to change, I know, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: It won't change, but there will be other venues in the Middle East that do have some better wins that may, may will come on the schedule at some point, I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Variety is the, the spice of life, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: If we'd all, if we went to places like, you know, Sastez was incredible, and the, the, the breeze there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of those days where watching from the shore, you were looking downwind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you can see white horses looking downwind, you know, it's
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was one of those days, and I remember looking out thinking, well, if only all the events were like this because it was an incredible scene, but then you do have to balance it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I agree that two holes in the water crawling around like we had in Geneva, for example, that's not anyone's interest, we don't want that, we don't want new fans of the sport.
[SPEAKER_01]: logging on for the first time seeing the racing for the first time and seeing it, you know, crawling around, it's news fest, you know, that's, that's not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Sunday and Abu Dhabi, there was nothing wrong with that racing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually the final was very tense, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was tactical.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, you couldn't really ask for more in terms of that
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so GP will get there, but there's commercial realities also that need to be balanced.
[SPEAKER_00]: So looking ahead to 2026 from a North Star, points of view what goals of you all set for the team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is one where you're going to come back to me the end of the season and said, you said you would be, I'm not that slick, I'm not like, so it's a good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, we finished this season in sixth place and in the championship, kind of a B minus must do better on the scorecard.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we feel like we,
[SPEAKER_01]: had a challenging time through kind of the September period where we were in centre-pay, Geneva, Cadiz, but there were glimpses of what we could do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sergei P is pretty much become a starting competition first and foremost.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can get off the line, you can get a good result.
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, if you delve into
[SPEAKER_01]: average position of Mark 1 is surprisingly low.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, I think, and don't quote me on this, but I think the French are actually the best starters in the fleet.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got an average position at Mark 1 of like 5.09, or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's quite low, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, it's not, it's not amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, as North Star, we're eighth in the leaderboard on, on starts, position of Mark 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: And ours is 5.6.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it won't take much to move yourself up and to be, you know, a better starter.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you can just tweak something a little bit in the start and then in your way to the races.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's also very clear when you watch.
[SPEAKER_01]: cell GP, and you have your own team kind of front and center in your mind, you're only looking at the position that your own team is in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And quite often you'll find people saying, why don't you get very good starts out there?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the data and actually you were kind of second or third on the starts, it's just because it's very hard to actually see with the naked eye who's getting good starts and who isn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's obvious to us that starts a paramount for performance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's why we got Ian Williams to come and join us.
[SPEAKER_01]: specifically looking at starts, how we set up the starts, what the game plan is, and that perfectly fits with Joe and his role as lead coach as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So really kind of keen to see how that develops.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've done only a few days with Ian so far, and I felt that when we were in Abu Dhabi, I'll start in performance ahead, take a decent step on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you could see that in,
[SPEAKER_01]: we got an actually cracking start and let it mark one by a mile.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, hopefully we can replicate that and do more of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the other thing is, for me, Charles is an incredible talent, but he's actually not been in so GP that long.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you look at the number of race starts he's had, he's done a season and a half compared to the likes of, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Tom, things be or Pete or, you know, those, those guys, they've, they've done a huge amount of events.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think as the races go forward and we get more experiences as a group sailing together, we're going to get better and better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say now, I really do hope that this time next year we would have been pushing at getting into that top three at the end of the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's all you can really hope for as a team once again, the top three and it can happen, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think if as long as we're in the discussion through late end of next year in terms of getting up towards the ground final, then I think there would have been a good season.
[SPEAKER_01]: for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just more consistent see we want to be able to operate better as a team throughout the year.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not have quite so many highs and lows that we've had this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that would be, that would be a good season for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, consistency.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Golden, the golden ticket isn't it that's so hard to so obvious but so hard to achieve.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll feel thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's great to get an inside view from the top of a, of a, of a, of a, a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it for this episode of the Yacht Racing Life podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: 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.