‘I want to inspire women sailors to get into this world’
➤ hannah Mills is out to break a male monopoly and provide a pathway by earning her place in Ben Ainslie’s Sailgp team
Hannah Mills jokes that her goal in Bermuda this week is simply “to sit behind Ben and try not to fall off the back”. But the truth is the 2016 Olympic gold medallist has far loftier ambitions than that. As the first of six British women who will have the chance to train with Ben Ainslie’s Sailgp team over the coming months, Mills is hoping to impress her former Great Britain team-mate sufficiently to earn a full-time position in his squad. And that is just the start. “I want to inspire young female sailors to break into this entire world,” she says. “That’s my inspiration.”
The “world” Mills is talking about is the elite end of professional inshore sailing: the America’s Cup and Sailgp, the global league which uses one-design foiling catamarans. Season two of the series is due to start in Bermuda this weekend, with most of the world’s top sailors present and correct. Pete Burling, fresh from steering New Zealand to America’s Cup success out in Auckland, will helm the Kiwi entry; Jimmy Spithill, his vanquished rival, is helmsman on the American boat; Tom Slingsby (Australia) and Nathan Outteridge (Japan), two more bigname helmsmen, will also be there. Not to mention Ainslie himself.
The common denominator? None are women. Nor were there any in the America’s Cup just gone.
It is a statistic that is long overdue a correction. As Mills says, in a sport where women compete alongside men in countless categories, including the most gruelling offshore races in the world, there is no valid reason to exclude half the world’s population.
The argument that the classes of boat used in these series are powerbased is valid up to a point. But not all roles require raw power. On the AC75S in the recent America’s Cup, neither the helm, nor in some cases the tactician or trimmer or flight controller, required much in the way of brute strength.
With Sailgp’s F50 catamarans it is the same thing. Two of the five roles involve grinding, but there are three other roles on board – helmsman, trimmer and flight controller – which could just as easily be performed by women. “Put it this way, I don’t think there’s any physical reason why a woman couldn’t do them,” Mills says. “Mind you, I haven’t sailed on one yet.”
The 33-year-old, who has been with the team since last Tuesday,
‘Put it this way, I don’t think that there’s any physical reason why a woman couldn’t do this’
should get the chance to do so this week, provided Covid-19 does not intervene. Bermuda is in lockdown, but the sailing is being allowed to go ahead “in a bubble”.
Mills has already undergone safety training – being dunked underwater with breathing apparatus and having to untether herself from the boat – and Ainslie, a huge fan of Mills since she broke into the GB squad pre-london, says if the wind is light he will let her steer and trim, although the complex flight control systems might require more than a few days of homework.
Mills says she just wants to “soak up whatever she can” from the experience, whether as “sixth man” on the back of the boat or in an active role.
It is testament to the seriousness with which she is taking this that she is prepared to sacrifice a
precious fortnight of training three months out from an Olympics.
A silver medallist at London 2012 and a gold medallist in Rio four years later, the Cardiff-born sailor will become the most successful female Olympic sailor of all time if she defends her 470 title with new partner Eilidh Mcintyre in Japan this summer. The pair have just finished fifth at the 470 World Championships in Vilamoura, Portugal. Time is fast running out to fine-tune
their partnership after a frustrating Covid-battered year.
But this was, Mills argues, simply too good an opportunity to pass up. “To be around people like Ben and all the incredible sailors competing on this circuit, it is pretty inspirational,” she admits. “Eilidh understands. She sees it for what it is, in terms of trying to pave a pathway for other female sailors. Also, she can see that it could be good for me right now just to take a step back
from the Olympics stuff, in terms of keeping fresh.”
Mills was one of 20 or so Britons who applied for the role in December, after Sailgp announced a “gender equity initiative” last autumn, requiring all eight teams to hire at least one female athlete this year.
Discussions are still ongoing as to whether teams will be required to give their new recruits a role on board during racing itself, but Mills thinks some form of “quota” system is probably a “necessary evil” for now. “I’d love it to be purely on merit but I think at least to start with it has to be mandatory,” she says. “There is no other way to bridge the experience gap at the moment.”
And the future? Does she imagine herself helming in the America’s Cup a few years from now? Mills smiles. “We’ll have to wait and see,” she says.
“Sailgp would be an amazing step. But my aspirations are more about providing a pathway and inspiring other women to follow. I can only imagine what it would have felt like growing up and seeing female sailors on boats like these, alongside the men. It always felt completely out of reach.”