Moth Swatting
The most anticipated Moth world championship is attracting the world's best like Moths to a...(oh don't go there)
My attestation that the elite end of sailing really is in the rudest of health continues with a pesky insect that has been dominating a strange part of my brain like a ticking countdown. Perhaps the class should be renamed the International Mosquito because once bitten it’s an itch that goes on for years. As it is, the International Moths simply chew an increasingly large hole in the participants’ wallets but for the past 15 years or so its World Championship has ascended to be the trump card at the interview stage for just about every America’s Cup or SailGP player.
This year it’s down in beautiful New Zealand at the epic Manly sailing Club with proceedings starting on the 30th December so plenty of time for the bulk loading season as these days you need a few extra slices of Turkey in order to get to the front of the fleet. Long gone are the Roger Angell / John Claridge / Toby Collier days, even the likes of Moth God Rohan Veal have been surpassed as the boats foiled faster and the rig loadings went up significantly.
Curious that - I didn’t do very well at Physics at school, I was far too busy in the library looking at 12 Metres and writing about them (gosh they look dated now but they were everything and more back in the late ‘80’s) so understanding the rig load dynamics is beyond me. The foil tech in Manly is equally something that I can sit and listen to for ages about. Big is better I hear, loads are stratospheric, power is mighty and the big takeaway is that now: Fat is Fast. Okay, okay…“trained athletic muscle on larger frames” is fast in the Moths these days.
Before I tie myself up in knots and alienate the Moth-ers, I’ll get back to safer ground. Looking at the entry list and it’s pretty remarkable. I highlight: Diego Botin, Enzo Balanger, Harry Melges, Iain Jensen, Jaime Harguindey, Kevin Peponnet, Lucas Calabrese, Martin Wizner, Simon Hiscocks, Riley Gibbs, Leo Takahashi and even Phil Robertson. That’s a stellar, mega, extraordinary line-up and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the engraver is sharpening his tools and learning spellings already for one of those ‘big’ names. But I’ll go all bold predictions here: none of those are in with a shout compared to the new generation of Moth high-fliers who have all been down in New Zealand training for weeks.
The new cabal at the top of the tree are Jacob Pye, World Champion in that light airs nonsense of Portland in 2023, Nicolai Jacobsen, George Gautrey and…drum roll…Mattias Coutts, the good one in the family. My spies in Auckland tell me that in training Jake (Jacob) and Mattias are neck and neck with Jake perhaps having a small edge but it could go either way depending on conditions and big fleet fortune. Sam Street is another name to watch, so to Henry Haslett and whilst all of these names perhaps feel new, they’ve all been killing it in the class all year and it’s a clique at the top that are going to be kicking the established names hard when that gun starts.
In the women’s fleet, it’s electric and there’s just so much on the line. Catch the eye here and in next year’s World Championships, which will be held at Lake Garda and will be the biggest event on planet sail, and the keys to a very bright kingdom at the apex of the sport awaits.
These are the ‘radar’ championships that everyone (and I mean everyone) will be watching and there’s three hotter-than-the-sun candidates for the coveted title: Helena Scutt, Hattie Rogers and Nicole van der Velden. Helena is the current World Champion and will be fighting tooth and nail to retain it whilst the smart money suggests that Hattie, who has won everything in the Waszp and Moth in recent times, is the coming force of the class and could be set for a period of dominance that will cement her status as the most inspirational sailor in world sailing at the moment. Nicole though will have other ideas and as a rising star of the Spanish SailGP team and getting recognition globally, Many Sailing Club is a stage where she won’t want to disappoint. My money is on Hattie to do the job - her training videos have been revealing and she’s sailing near her peak that is Everest to the rest of us.
Follow the next generation’s social media profiles and you’ll see sailing how it should be and how us rose-tinted-spectacle wearers knew it to be. On the water every day, these guys and girls are pushing each other to heights that are going to leave everyone in their wake. The likes of ex-World Champions Slingsby, Outteridge, Burling (and surprisingly 2022 Moth World Champ Dylan Fletcher-Scott) are not currently on the entry list. Perhaps they know or can sense a change in the Moth galaxy? Also it’s interesting to see a dearth of many who competed in the Youth & Women’s AC this summer - perhaps the Moth Worlds
is too brutal a place?
Whatever, it promises to be the final event of an amazing year of sailing and come very early 2025, new Moth Kings and Queens will be crowned.
New Year, for once, is interesting…oh and there’s the Sydney-Hobart too. It just gets better and better. What a sport…!
Magnus Wheatley