Interview with Hannah Mills
by Mark Jardine 6 Oct 2024 12:00 BST
Athena Pathway Skipper and CEO Hannah Mills © Athena Pathway
I spoke with Hannah Mills in Barcelona ahead of the 37th America's Cup to find out more about the Athena Pathway, the PUIG Women's America's Cup, how she put the team together, and what sailing an AC40 is really like.
Mark Jardine: Hannah, first of all, the Athena Pathway has been a huge opportunity for both youth and women's sailing. But it's not been an easy path to actually bring this about.
Hannah Mills: When the Women's and Youth America's Cup events got announced at the back end of 2021, Ben [Ainslie] and I sat down to talk about what we were going to do, and it felt like such an opportunity for us, particularly in the UK, to try and use it as a stepping stone to build a pathway. Not just for sailors in the next generation to inspire them around foiling, as well as giving opportunity and experience to women - who, generally, have already achieved a lot in the sport, to get into this type of sailing as well - but also the shore side. To say, actually, you know, there is a pathway, particularly for females, into the shore side of sailing.
The final piece, I guess, is around engineering and STEM, and how these types of boats take an army of engineers to get them on the water. STEM career choices are good ones; we want young people to choose STEM subjects, to become engineers, to see how exciting sport is. There are opportunities in sport, but also around climate change and the jobs that we're going to need to solve a lot of the challenges around climate change will need engineers. So I guess that's how it all loosely links together.
Mark: This was born out of your and Ben's passion for the future of the sport, but the backing for this has come from many quarters.
Hannah: Yes, exactly. We've got a lot of commercial backing, and a lot of private backing, but it is not just financial. We've got people supporting by offering their time and input to help make it as good as it can be. We've partnered with the Andrew Simpson Foundation in Weymouth to try and join the dots there a little bit. They've got such a great programme running there, and it's the foiling mecca of the UK. For us, running our WASZP camps down there to get young people and women a chance to experience foiling, and hopefully be excited by that, was a great opportunity.
More recently, we worked with the Greig Academy - an inner city school in London - with a teacher, Jon Holt, who's just the most passionate person you'll ever meet, who set up a whole sailing program for the kids there. It's been running for eight years or so, with some amazing talent coming through. For us to partner with them and provide opportunity for some of those sailors into the sport as a career is just a privilege.
Then we've got Kai Hockley here, who's a really big ILCA talent, who's joined our GP team. He's been within us this last few weeks, and he's got a whole year-long apprenticeship with the different teams of the Athena group. He is an amazing sailor in his own right, but has also been getting stuck in on the shore side. I guess for us, he's the first of that kind of partnership, with the school and that program, trying to create more diversity and more opportunity for people in our sport.
Mark: It's not just Kai though. The different people you've had to bring together for both campaigns - the Youth and the Women's America's Cup - is really diverse, both shore-side and sailors. From a team management point of view, how is it integrating everybody together?
Hannah: It's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. You don't always know what you're getting yourself in for, having never done anything like this before. I feel really proud of the people we've got here and the work everyone's putting in to give us the best chance of delivering on the water. It's a super diverse group in terms of where people have come from, and level of experience.
We've got a very gender balanced team, too, which I'm really proud of. For me, it's about setting the bar for what's possible and what should be possible, and trying to create environments for everyone to thrive; that is not always easy, but in many ways, we've done a good job. We learned lots of lessons as well.
Mark: One of the people who went through the trials is Saskia [Clark], so you got your old 470 team back together.
Hannah: She did! I didn't think she would want to come and do it, but when I said to come and just have a go in the simulator to see what she thought, over a year ago now, she loved it; it's been so good having her around. She's just the most amazing team person - so much energy, so much experience, and just always great vibes. Now a key member of the team, and it's so cool to be on the water sailing together again.
Mark: The Women's America's Cup, the publicity that surrounds it, especially with the AC40 - which is like a go kart compared to a Bentley - is a real visual spectacle.
Hannah: Yes, the boat is phenomenal, actually. And just getting to sail the boat is such an honour; it's amazing. I feel so lucky every time I go sailing, and the racing is going to be a really good level in general. I think it's going to be interesting with the different teams. One side of the pool is all the Cup teams who've had a lot of time in the boats, versus the other side of the pool, which is the nations that aren't affiliated to a Cup team.
Artemis have obviously put up a proper full campaign around that with a boat, and they'll be really strong. With the other teams, I think it'll be a challenge, because they've spent so much time in the sim - which is really, really helpful and important - but at the same time, nothing compares to getting in the boat and feeling the pressure of: you've got an AC40 under your feet, and you need to get it around the racecourse!
Mark: The 470 is a tweaky boat, and you know all about getting into the right mode at the right time, but the AC40 is exactly the same thing, but on a completely different platform! How have you found it, realising which settings go fast when?
Hannah: As you say, the 470 is super tweaky, but by the end you can do it with your eyes closed. And that was always the goal with the AC40; to try and get to that point within a very short time. We're never going to quite get there, but the more you sail the boat, the quicker you can quickly problem solve if it's not quite in the right mode - how you can quickly adjust it to get it back ripping again. I've been pleasantly surprised as to how much of a dinghy it feels like, the feedback you get through the steering wheel, through the foil arm in the water and pressing the buttons and changing things is just like another boat, which has been really nice.
Mark: Finally, one of the more bizarre things for conventional sailors is this whole idea of going through your own wind shadow after going around the windward mark: re-finding your own upwind wind shadow. That's mind bending, to be honest. How do you find that? And can you visualise those points on the course?
Hannah: It's a huge challenge for all the teams, especially as we've not done much in terms of experiencing it in a fleet. So there's a big learning curve there for everyone. It is massive, that wind shadow. Going through your own dirty wind and the vortex of that is not easy. You watch it on tv, thinking, "what are they doing?" but the reality is, it's really hard. So there'll be a lot of lessons learned, hopefully quickly, about what not to do.