Last year – along with several other aspiring women sailors Mills – tried out with Ben Ainslie’s British outfit through SailGP’s diversity programme ‘Inspire’ to become part of the circuit’s newly formed women’s performance pathway programme.
“I had watched Season 1 and just loved what I saw and I knew it was a huge opportunity,” Mills says.
“There are not many opportunities for women beyond Olympic sailing to carry on in our sport so it felt like a massive chance that I wanted to grab.”
Unsurprisingly, given her pedigree and track record of Olympic success in the women’s 470 dinghy – a silver and two gold medals at the last three Olympics, as two world championship titles in the class – she made the grade.
Unlike the majority of her new male SailGP team-mates Mills admits to having had very limited foiling experience before stepping aboard the British F50 flying catamaran.
“My only foiling experience prior to this was on a wing foil,” she says. I got pretty addicted to that just after the first [Covid 19] lockdown. The Olympics had been postponed and it was just something new to get out on the water when we could and I completely fell in love with it.
“Sailing-wise, the F50 is the only boat I have been on that foils – so I have gone in right at the top, I guess.”
Mills’ first flight aboard an F50 took place in Bermuda last April during her trial to join the British squad.
“Sailing the F50 for the first time was insane,” she recalls.
“The first time out is just mind-blowing. You are cruising along with the hulls in the water and then suddenly they say ‘OK, we’re going’ and they ramp it up and it feels like you triple your boat speed in a second.
“During the tacks and the gybes and the bear aways there is so much G-force – and you are not necessarily always expecting it. I remember thinking: ‘OK, copy. That is going to take some getting used to’.
Training is one thing, but fleet racing in 50-foot foiling cats is a whole other dimension, Mills tells me.
“It’s been a massive learning curve off the water and then on the water, obviously, the racing is very different,” she says.
“When you throw seven other boats on the racecourse, with boundaries and everything else that’s going on, it’s just completely bonkers.”
As crazy and intense as this new SailGP racing experience was, Mills’ vast experience and skill as a racing sailor meant she quickly got used to the frenetic pace of the action.
“You normalise it and once you are racing you are so focused on the racing that it is only when you stop that you think ‘that was nuts!’,” she says.
During racing Mills’ responsibilities are strategy and communications.
Crammed into the tiny aft pod of the British F50 behind skipper and helmsman Ainslie, she feeds relevant information into the conversation loop between him and wing trimmer Iain Jensen.
“It is not at all drag racing – the boundaries changed that up, for sure. With so many boats you get really impacted if you have someone on your wind, for example.
“The information I deliver is about where we go on the racecourse, what we do, and the decisions we make,” she explains.
“I am basically building the picture so that Ben can make the best possible decision while he is distracted with trying to helm the boat as well.
It’s a role, Mills says, that harks straight back to her Olympic campaigning days.
“That’s exactly how we ran the 470,”she tells me.
“We did so much work in our Olympic team about our communication loop and how that was working and that has been really transferable to the role I’m doing on the F50 now.
“Now though, because I haven’t got the distraction of helming, so I have got much more headspace to build that picture for Ben.”
“I feel like the more I do it, the more I can see the information he needs. Because I have been in his position helming I can really see what is relevant and useful for him to make the next decision on the boat.”
The introduction of female sailors to the SailGP circuit has been received in part with both praise and cynicism. How the global circuit takes the initiative forward over coming seasons will determine which sentiments are justified.
From what I have been told, a variety of options are on the table for discussion. These range from the integration of female sailors into the helming, wing trimming and flight controller roles, to the creation of a separate women’s league for all female crews.
For her part, Mills believes that success for the women’s pathway programme would be to have gender equity on the boats.
“I think that would be a massive statement for our sport – and beyond our sport,” she says. “There are not many other sports where you could do that successfully, but with these types of boats actually you really could.
“It is really exciting and this is just the start with the women’s pathway programme. It’s new but all the women are incredibly dedicated and incredibly good sailors and we just want to create the pathway for the next generation of females as well.”
Without a doubt, Mills’ post-Olympic career looks bright.
As well as ramping up her high-performance foiling skills with SailGP, the introduction of a Women’s America’s Cup to take place in parallel with AC37 in Bermuda in 2024 can only be good news for Mills.
That topic wasn’t up for discussion when we spoke, but surely it is a no-brainer decision for her to skipper a British entry under the auspices of Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia syndicate.
Watch this space.
Justin Chisholm
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