The Foil Podcast

The legal battle between Sir Ben Ainslie and Sir Jim Ratcliffe has taken another dramatic turn. In this week's episode of The Foil Podcast, Andy Rice, Freddie Carr and Neil Cole dive into the latest developments in the increasingly bitter dispute over ownership of Britannia, the AC75 that carried INEOS Britannia to the 37th America's Cup Match in Barcelona. The team unpacks a series of extraordina...

A cruise ship blocking Friday practice; just three boats making it to the water to race on Saturday; a complex three-boat crash on Sunday; and a controversial flying finish to the final. That was SailGP New York in a nutshell.   In our latest podcast, The Foil’s Andy Rice, Lewis Smith and Freddie Carr join host Neil Cole to break down the many talking points of a chaotic weekend in the Big Apple....

The America's Cup is finally back, and after eighteen months of SailGP we'd almost forgotten how different it feels. So Neil Cole sits down with Freddie Carr and Lewis Smith – The Foil's new reporter and multimedia editor, just back from Cagliari – to dive into our very first taste of AC38 fleet racing. Lewis was on the ground for (nearly) the whole weekend, and shares his hot take: he prefers the...

Mozzy and Freddie are back with a bonus podcast, previewing the AC38 Cagliari preliminary regatta, the curtain-raiser on the road to Naples. With only 11 of last Cup's AC75 sailors returning to the racecourse, and a fresh wave of names making their debuts, this opening regatta in Sardinia feels less like a tune-up and more like the moment the next America’s Cup cycle properly begins. Mozzy and Fre...

“The time is now,” decorated sailor Glenn Ashby tells The Foil’s Freddie Carr in an exclusive interview on Team Australia’s newly-minted challenge for the 38th America’s Cup.    In a long-promised one-on-one with The Foil, Ashby tells his old friend about how Australia’s return to the Cup for the first time since 2000 came together, and how by the end of this year an expansion to “80-100 people” m...

Australia have now won so many SailGP events that it's starting to look like the anomaly when they don't. Episode 19 of The Foil Podcast digs into a Bermuda Grand Prix that felt like the F50s finally getting to stretch their legs – flat water, proper breeze, big race course – and dissects exactly how Tom Slingsby's crew made it look so straightforward. Andy and Freddie walk through the racing day...

SailGP returns to Bermuda's Great Sound this weekend for the fifth event of season 6. For episode 18 of The Foil Podcast, Neil Cole, Andy Rice and Freddie Carr serve up everything you need to know before the F50s hit the water. The fourth visit to the spiritual home of SailGP brings a fleet of 12 (no Black Foils until Halifax) onto a stretch of water Andy and Freddie reckon plays more like lake sa...

New alliances, new signings, and a secret that slipped out… In episode 17, Andy Rice, Freddie Carr and Neil Cole dig into the detail of how AC38 is playing out. Paul Goodison is the new skipper of Tudor Team Alinghi, while Giles Scott was just announced as the sailing director of American Racing Challenger Team USA. Both are on the podcast this week, and they walk Freddie through the early weeks a...

Neil Cole, Andy Rice and Freddie Carr return for the latest episode of The Foil podcast with a range of subjects to discuss. Andy has just returned from Milan where he witnessed the livery reveal for Ferrari’s amazing Hypersail project.   First up, the team tackle some audience questions, including when New Zealand’s Black Foils will return to the SailGP fleet as a new F50 takes shape in Southampt...

Australia's Flying Roos delivered what has to be the best single-day performance in SailGP history at Rio – and episode 15 of The Foil podcast breaks down how they did it. Andy Rice, just back from Rio, joins Freddie Carr and Neil Cole to dissect a Sunday that saw Tom Slingsby's crew take 30 points from a possible 30 in conditions that left most of the fleet scrambling. While others wrestled with...

SailGP heads to Rio de Janeiro for the first time ever this weekend, and the forecast suggests a tactical chess match rather than a foiling sprint. Freddie Carr, Andy Rice and Neil Cole dig into the data, the storylines, and the strategies that will decide who leaves Brazil with points. Light winds are expected throughout the weekend in Guanabara Bay, so the team looks at exactly what worked in Sy...

This week, Andy Rice and Freddie Carr report live from opposite ends of the Bay of Palma – Andy cycling 10 kilometres along the coast to chase down Olympic stars, Freddie shivering aboard TP52 Gladiator as the rain hammers down. The Trofeo Princesa Sofía has 1,100 sailors across seven race courses and the Tramuntana mountains have been dumping 40-knot gusts into the bay. ILCA 7 sailor Micky Becket...

The Foil podcast team discuss the big America’s Cup story of the moment: the battle for the Britannia AC75 following Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s demand for Sir Ben Ainslie to return the boat he claims he owns. Presenter Neil Cole and Andy Rice quiz Freddie Carr on the row, forcing Freddie – a cyclor for the Ineos team in AC37 – to walk a fine line on a topic he cannot be subjective about. Freddie offers a...

Taihoro has splashed. Almost 17 months since an AC75 last sailed, Emirates Team New Zealand have fired the first shot in the AC38 arms race. But how far ahead are the Defenders really? And what do the challengers need to do to close the gap? In this episode of The Foil Podcast, resident America's Cup obsessive Tom 'Mozzy' Morris joins Freddie Carr to break down everything we've learned so far from...

The America's Cup sprint is officially on. Team New Zealand have rolled their AC75 out of the shed in Auckland, and for the first time in the Cup's 175-year history, there won't be a single human powering the sails. In episode 10 of The Foil podcast, Andy Rice, Freddie Carr and Neil Cole unpack what the shift from cyclors to batteries actually means for how these boats will be sailed. With a one-d...

In this week’s episode, Freddie Carr, Andy Rice and Neil Cole break down Sydney SailGP – where the USA completed their redemption arc, Slingsby had a few frustrations, and light winds caused a weekend of upsets. Twelve months ago, Team USA capsized on the tow boat heading to practice in Sydney Harbour. It was rock bottom for a team that couldn't catch a break. Jump forward to this weekend and Tayl...

Sydney SailGP is almost here, but the Auckland collision casts a long shadow. In this week's episode, the team digs into one of the most consequential weekends in SailGP's seven-year history. France skipper Quentin Delapierre joins to fill us in about what happened in Auckland and what comes next. Manon Audinet spent over a week in hospital, and the French team has brought in a psychologist to sup...

Neil Cole is joined by Andy Rice and Freddie Carr, who were both on the spot in Auckland and witnessed the devastating collision between New Zealand’s Black Foils and DS Team France that left two sailors with serious injuries last weekend. Our trio review all the events, from the cause to the effect that led to SailGP splitting the fleet for the final day of racing. But should the organisers have...

“These will be ‘hot laps’ with 12 other world-class teams,” says Freddie Carr as The Foil sets the scene for round two of the 2026 SailGP championship in Auckland, New Zealand this weekend.   As Andy Rice tells us, there’s a “pretty heinous forecast for the weekend – a south-south westerly” to greet the crews and keep a bumper crowd on the edge of their grandstand seats. “When you ask those who ra...

Last week, The Famous Project crew made history – and Dee Caffari sees it as just the beginning. Freddie Carr sits down with Dee to unpack how eight women became the first all-female crew to complete a non-stop circumnavigation of the globe on a multihull – a 57-day voyage that rewrote the record books despite everything the ocean threw at them. In this exclusive interview, Caffari reveals the sta...

Offshore at inshore intensity – that's the new reality of ocean racing, and the crew of Jason Carroll's Mod 70 Argo just proved it by smashing the transatlantic record in a near-constant match race with Zulu across 2,800 miles of Atlantic. In this offshore special, Freddie Carr and Neil Cole sit down with crew Pete Cumming to dissect a record attempt that came down to single-digit minutes. Four da...

Neil Cole, Freddie Carr and Andy Rice reflect on the main talking points thrown up by the SailGP season opener in Perth – which all agree was the “best event yet”. The team discuss the benefits of racing at an “extreme venue”, while acknowledging pre-event injuries to Chris Draper and Iain ‘Goobs’ Jensen highlight how “hairy” this sport can be. There’s praise for “the wave whisperer” Luke Parkinso...

What can we expect in SailGP Season 6? The championship that crowned eight different winners in 12 events last season is already back – and this time, there are 13 teams fighting for the $2 million prize in Abu Dhabi. In the second episode of The Foil Podcast, host Neil Cole is joined by Freddie Carr and Andy Rice to dissect the dynamics shaping Season 6. Sweden's Artemis squad, fronted by Iain Pe...

Eight different event winners. Twelve teams separated by margins that would have been unthinkable two seasons ago. The SailGP fleet is levelling up, and the stats are there to prove it. In The Foil's first ever podcast, Neil Cole sits down with Freddie Carr and Andy Rice for a deep-dive into a season where the old certainties no longer applied. Australia – dominant force of seasons one through thr...