Hannah Mills on a historic Women's America's Cup

[@timpringle6505]

It is so nice to see you being recognised as an intelligent and important "ameteur" pundit. Influential people out there obviously now recognise how good you are in the media at providing really honest and clever analysis of his very technical arm of sailing, and how popular and thus how important you have become. Well done.

[@3000waterman]

Starstruck Mozzy. Love it! But ib fairness, Hannah is a proper star turn.

[@DaveandGinny972]

Wasn't expecting this Tom! What a superstar Hannah is and what a great interview. Looking forward to the next four races. The Italian team are very good but there's not much in it and it would be great to see history repeat itself...from last Friday!

[@johbuldmann0206]

great interview. Very good questions and interesting answers. Great job to you two!

[@issieanderson2083]

Bravo Hannah Mills. A great interview.

[@Davetarr]

Hannah is such a legend of the sport, great to see her involved in the Women's AC.

[@tristankiddie1710]

Love the Fan Boy Moment!! How awesome to get to interview such a legend 🙂

[@chrismartin5870]

After bill Koch won the cup in 1992, he didnt want to defend it and so he funded an all womens team. They came within a single run of beating Dennis Connor, and he pulled every trick in he book to beat them....all in a boat 10x more physical than the current boats. Look it up.

[@peterrobinson5576]

Interesting discussion on how to integrate men's and women's competitions. I also follow the Vendée Globe - single handed non stop around the world sailing, also on boats with foils. Obviously tremendously physically demanding but the men and women compete against each other and I think that's great.

[@clairelewis5008]

Great interview Mozzy

[@edochina]

Well done, next edition AC should involve Mozzy, you proved in all these many years that you can create good quality contents

[@sutheral100]

Excellent to see the diversity challenges in our sport being addressed at the Elite levels through Olympics, AC, and SailGP. May I suggest a follow up on grass roots diversity? The RS200, Europe and other classes are driving diverse participation for weekend warriors that doesn’t get nearly enough coverage…..

[@hoiho1000]

If ETNZ and Ineos Team UK have pulled this off and manage to bed it down with Womens and Youth America's cups going forward, what a legacy they will leave as the custodians of the AC37 match. Proud to be a kiwi whatever goes down next week.

[@jamesaron1967]

Fantastic interview, Hannah is one of my favorites.

[@DavidN81224]

Great interview! Hannah speaks so well and is great for the sport! looking forward to seeing more of her

[@julian4548]

Don’t forget the women who are behind the scenes, designers, engineers etc who are not on “ the boat”. Many of them are sailors also. Some world female champs among them. Great interview

[@goggineast1906]

Be useful to state the date of the interview. The women's AC is currently running,

[@Perfectly_Other]

They say in the interview that it is being recorded pre Olympics

[@Corkedit]

Great interview on the whole. Women/Men = Equal..... may the best one win the place in the team. If you are weak, you ain't getting the place and that's a fact and the right fact.

[@KiteTurbine]

Where do we find watch parties around the UK? My grandfather was one of the Endeavour amateur crew

[@freeaccess5905]

Excellent job Mozzy!

[@timpringle6505]

She was quite right about the Italians. They are good.

[@ClivehWright]

Question For Hannah if I may (and if you get chance to interview her again) Could there be mixed Wasp racing based on weight categories?

[@barfootSmitty]

nice one. you kept this in your pocket for a while!

[@KL-qy4ye]

Super interview

[@TheZitherish]

Nice one. A question from your AC40 experience: when you wear a coms headset, does it impinge on your auditory awareness of wind and wave?

[@henrikjorhov4354]

One think it really must

[@LEN33322]

Interesting question. Be great to get an insight. I imagine there’s so much apparent that it’s not as much of a impact as nonfoiler

[@johnhepworth9427]

Great interview Tom .. you will be giving up your day job soon ! ;)

[@RicoSuave007-z5i]

Wonderful interview Mozzi! But I also have a question - why was Sweden, who won the first B race today (on 6.10.24), told to sit out the next race "because they had already won a race", while all the other teams except Germany (they were boundary disqualified) went on to race, then everyone went on to the remaining races anyway?

[@imjmones]

They were instructed not to race because of technical issues (power and comms issues) and were compensated with 4 points (average of the rest I believe). Not at all related to having been first in race 1

[@DavidProphet-f5b]

An 'Athena' Pathway to build teams for future America's Cup challenges across many countries. The equivalent for sailing to F1 with the identification of talent and their progression. So sailing needs to pick the brains of the F1 teams not just on technology but also attracting sponsorship and the identification and development of talent. The America's Cup will need to provide a full package of racing events across the two month Challenger and Final event. So youth and women's team regattas have their place possibly made up of the teams from the America's Cup challengers and also of the top teams from a series of regattas around the scored like the F1 world championship.

[@jonathanmorris3416]

How long before Hannah get’s an AC75 seat?

[@tullochgorum6323]

A positive development, and the AC40s are proving to be a great class. But frankly it's disappointing that none of the 75s have selected a women as a helm or trimmer - is there really not a single woman who merits a berth? Hopefully this new competition will help the female talent to become recognised in the emerging world of foiling.

[@James-v3n1q]

Momentum has started, it should only be a matter of time now.

[@jameslittlewood7821]

I liked the Ocean Race approach of incentivising blended crews. At first, ALL the team bosses were like “nah, we’ll just go with dudes thanks despite that taking women entitles us to more crew”. Unbelievable chauvinism. They all came round eventually.

[@tullochgorum6323]

@@jameslittlewood7821 Sail GP has also introduced a rule that at least 1 woman should be included in the crew. It would be good if the next America's Cup went the same way. Sir Ben has been very proactive in promoting the new Women's Cup. If he's leading the next round of Protocol negotiations, perhaps they'll include something similar. I'm not convinced the Kiwis would be as enlightened - though hopefully I'm doing them a disservice.

[@jameslittlewood7821]

@@tullochgorum6323 as a kiwi, team uk isn’t even my second favourite team. Partly because of my jingoism, and partly because Ben’s often a bit of a menace, although he seems to have avoided actual life threatening collisions in this edition - just. All that said, you’re probably correct: it wouldn’t be hard to be more progressive than your average NZ yachtie. And Dalts - love him as we might - doesn’t exactly project an image of empathetic sensitivity.

[@lawrencefalk8714]

It's exciting having a womens AC. I remember the Defender trials in San Diego where the women almost won and personally I was crushed multiple times in college sailing by women. Regarding the AC40, I'm probably getting ahead of myself because there would need to be money for it, but it would be cool to see the women have to design the sails, the foils, the software, etc... so the Womens AC had some of the team design competition that the established AC is rooted to.

[@jameslittlewood7821]

I think the idea is to give women experience in high end foiling so as to provide a pathway into the real thing, rather than a parallel event. The only way to do that that I can see is to incentivise blended sailing teams and shore teams, as they did in the last Ocean Race.

[@jameslittlewood7821]

Another great buncha insights. I was interested in the last Ocean Race, which had a soft mandate for mixed crews. I don’t see why the AC protocol couldn’t do the same. And indeed, why stop at gender? The protocol could specify a maximum number of men, and a maximum number ethnic Europeans in both sailing teams and shore teams. Why not? Next up: sustainability mandates. Any sailing team talking about sustainability is currently pissing in the wind when it comes to micro (or rather, macro) plastics. TNZ’s 70ft catamaran has spent the last 10 years shrink wrapped by a motorway off-ramp. The ridiculous big boat of ‘87 sits in a public area on the waterfront. There’s a first gen IACC kicking around the NZ auction sites for like a dollar. It’s good that there may be a second hand market for AC40s but what’s supposed to happen to all the rest of it? Mandate for the reduction, re-usability and recyclability of materials, and let the benefits flowing from the AC into the wider sport keep flowing into a society. And yes, I *do* have a love/hate relationship with sailing!

[@weatheranddarkness]

Was this embargoed for a whole month? Or was releasing this now intentional?

[@MozzySails]

Intentional to coincide with the womens racing

[@weatheranddarkness]

@@MozzySails It does land well since her team's doing pretty good in the standings, and GB as a whole is on a bit of a roll right now.

[@MozzySails]

@@weatheranddarkness yeah, fingers crossed I get to see them in the final as I am out next weekend. I filmed three things in a weekend with Athena and they've come out in sequence: me on the AC40, AC40 tactics (came out just before youth racing) and this. All made possible with the help of Musto who are the kite provider for Athena (plus DutchSail, Team Barcelona, Yandoo Aus)

[@ptewilks2634]

MOZZY WHY DO WE IN THE 40 AND 75 SEEM TO WASTE SO MUCH METREs IN THE ROUND THE MARKS 30 to 50 mtrs ?????

[@AlexHaworth-h1n]

Can’t get to max CANT on Britannia because it drops the bustle in the water which is even slower.

[@cosybike]

You'd think the engineers would put the castors on the IKEA cardboard sandwich composite shelving in a better position? I have 6 of these containing library books and you need to position about a third of the way in to prevent sagging. Very much the wrong tool for the job Anyway, expecting my Musto Sponsorship any day now for Ikea based engineering consultation.

[@Davetarr]

This belongs in the dull mens club group on Facebook 😂

[@gregbrougham6903]

Tom, you may find Grant Dalton's interview interesting re this topic - kzbin.info/www/bejne/j5-0eWikbauWe8U&ab_channel=Stuff