Hannah Mills


Hannah Mills, is a British competitive sailor and 2 time world champion in the Women's 470 class, having won in 2012 and 2019. Mills won a silver medal for Team GB with her crew Saskia Clark in the 2012 Olympics, and won gold in the same event at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Early life

Mills was born in Cardiff, Wales, and started sailing at Cardiff Sailing Centre when she was 8 years old after trying sailing on a family holiday in Cornwall. Mills then started moving up to sail for the Welsh National Optimist Squad and winning the British Optimist Championships in 2001.

Career

At the 2011 Skandia Sail for Gold regatta and the 2011 Weymouth & Portland International Regatta, Hannah won a silver medal in the 470 Women class.
After suffering a black flag in the very first race of the championships, Hannah and her crew Saskia claimed gold at the 2012 470 World Championships in Barcelona.
On 10 August 2012 Hannah Mills helming for Saskia Clark won a silver medal at the Olympic games in Weymouth. Mills battled hard throughout the event, not finishing outside the top 6 the entire regatta. She went into the medal race with crew Saskia Clark equal points with the New Zealand team and far enough ahead of the rest of the fleet that both boats were battling it out for Gold and Silver. After a great start, however, there was a dramatic wind shift and they came 9th in the medal race, which gave them the Silver medal.
On 10 December 2014, Mills and Clark were robbed at knifepoint in Rio de Janeiro while in training for the 2016 Olympics.
Mills and Clark won gold at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In October 2019, Mills was named as one among 12 sailors by British Olympic Association for Tokyo 2020.

Awards and honours

In 2002, Mills was voted UK Young Sailor of the Year and BBC Wales Young Sports Personality of the Year.
Mills won the Female World Sailor of the Year award in 2016.
Mills was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours.