Hannah Mills: Rewriting the rules

By Andy Frye
Finally, everyone seems to be saying right now, the world has woken up to the action-packed excitement provided by women in sports. Some sports observers would say that Caitlin Clark gets a lot of the credit for starting the fire when the 22-year-old Iowa hoops hero broke the NCAA’s all-time scoring record in basketball this past spring.

But the truth is that women have been conquering sports of all kinds for a long time. Enter Hannah Mills, who is the most successful female sailor in Olympic history.

She’s also one of the key crew members of the UK’s Emirates GBR team, which is part of SailGP, the competitive international league founded in 2019 by Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and world champion yachtsman Sir Russell Coutts.

Mills, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, describes sailing as her first love and one that branched off her early childhood fascination with sports.

“I started sailing at age eight on a family holiday on the south coast of England. I loved sports and wanted to do all of them,” said Mills, who grew up in Wales. Mills said that after that vacation, sailing became more than just another sport to try.

“Sailing was the freedom of being on a boat, with no parents around, totally on my own against the elements. I ultimately became obsessed with it, and begged my mom and dad to let me carry on.”

This weekend, Mills, who sails professionally in the strategist role for the eight-member Emirates GBR team, is set to represent her country in the New York Grand Prix sailing race. The race, a thrilling event that takes place in the heart of New York Harbor, is a testament to her dedication and skill.

Along with fellow strategist Hannah Diamond and Emirates GBR’s new driver and lead sailor Giles Scott, the British sail team won the recent SailGP event, the Rockwool Canada Sail Grand Prix, June 1-2, 2024, in Halifax.

Halifax was Emirates GBR’s third win of the season, but their first win with Giles Scott as driver. The race was one in which the British team overcame extremely challenging conditions to best the field.

The SailGP racing series goes year-round and features national teams using high-performance boats that race up to 100 kilometers per hour. The boats themselves are F50 foiling catamarans, boats with 50-foot double hulls and 24m sails.

When asked about her sailing career and her earliest days driving a boat, Mills acknowledges that historically sailing’s field of competitors have primarily been made up of men. But Mills said that sailing has evolved quickly over the last 30 years.

“Definitely from my junior years sailing, there was a much higher representation of guys doing it, maybe 80%. But once you get into Olympic sailing, especially since the 2016 Olympics, the sport is pretty even between women and men.” – Full story