BOUNDARY BREAKER
GRINDING DOWN BOUNDARIES
WITH THE UNITED STATES
By Miranda Blazeby, Digital Editor
SailGP is one of the only sports leagues in the world where men and women compete on a level playing field. We take a look at some of the iconic female athletes breaking boundaries and redefining the sport.
It’s been a big season for the U.S. SailGP Team. Midway through Season 4, news broke that the U.S. SailGP Team had been sold.
Taylor Canfield swiftly replaced league stalwart Jimmy Spithill as driver and signed an all-American team, with American sailor Anna Weis rejoining the team.
Weis, originally from the sailing Mecca of Fort Lauderdale in Florida, first picked up the sport at her local yacht club during summer sailing camps as a kid. “My mom wanted us to stay busy in the summer and we lived close to the yacht club,” Weis remembers.
In the early days, Weis admits she ‘didn’t take it that seriously’, preferring to ‘goof around’ with her friends instead. But after meeting a coach chasing an Olympic dream, Weis’s own dreams began to grow.
It didn’t take long for the work ethic to kick in too. “I realized that I could go through this, not work hard and have a miserable experience, or I could work hard and see what I could do,” she says.
The result was a top 10 at two Radial Youth Worlds, and becoming Laser Radial National Champion in 2016.
Weis struggled and overcame injuries before teaming up with American sailor Riley Gibbs in the foiling Nacra 17 for the 2020 Olympics. The pair won the gold medal at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, becoming the first US Sailing Team athletes to qualify for Tokyo in the mixed multihull class.
An Olympic medal looked possible, maybe even probable, but ultimately Weis and Riley placed 9th in the Games. Weis admits ‘the stress of the Games’ affected their performance, but says she’s still ‘proud’ of their result.
“Finishing in the top 10 is still a great achievement - I worked hard and gave it my all and you can’t ask for anything else.”
Following the Games, Weis returned to college, finished her public health degree and started competing in the foiling windsurfing IQ Foil class.
Then the phone rang. The call was from U.S. SailGP Team CEO Mike Buckley. He, together with technology investor and founding Uber engineer Ryan McKillen and Margaret McKillen, had joined together to buy the U.S. SailGP Team.
And he wanted Weis back on the roster.
"I WANT TO PROVE WOMEN CAN PERFORM IN DIFFERENT ROLES ON THE BOAT - ESPECIALLY PHYSICAL ONES"
Weis had previously raced with the team under Spithill at Season 2’s Sydney and San Francisco events as strategist. But this time, Buckley wanted her to join as a grinder.
Positioned at the front of the boat, the two grinders work together to turn the winch handles, allowing the wing trimmer to trim (control) the wing as effectively as possible (the wing is essentially the engine of the F50).
Both roles are widely considered to be the most physically challenging of the six positions on board and have historically always been held by male athletes in everything other than light wind conditions.
Joining the team in such a role might seem a daunting prospect, but Weis is no stranger to physical graft.
While studying at Boston University, she was a key member of the Women’s Rowing Team which, she says, eclipsed studying as her ‘main priority’.
Now, as Weis works to improve her endurance and speed grinding on the F50, she draws on that crucial experience. She’s spending ‘a lot of time’ on the grinding machine in the gym, sometimes for 90 minute stints.
“I think of when I was rowing in college - the more time you spend on the rowing machine, the faster you’re going to get. The more I’m grinding, even if I’m just in Zone 2 (the 65-75% heart rate zone), I’m still getting the reps in and the better my body can adapt.”
The goal, she says, is not to be ‘100 kg and gaining weight’ - she’s not, she admits, ‘going to be hitting the numbers of the biggest guys in the league’. Instead, the goal is ‘to reach the limit of how strong [she] can be and prove that women can perform in different roles on the boat, especially physical ones’.
She acknowledges the challenge of competing against the male grinders, but remains confident in her ability. “I believe it can be possible and we can break even more boundaries in this sport.”
TRAIL BLAZER
THE RAZOR SHARP STRATEGIST
MAKING WAVES WITH CANADA
By Miranda Blazeby, Digital Editor
Back in 2015, Annie Haeger was on top of the world. She and sailing partner Briana Provancha were considered one of the world’s top teams in their class.
They won the year-out Olympic test event in Rio de Janiero, sealing their place at the 2016 Olympic Games. Then, to top it off, Haeger was named U.S. Sailing Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year.
She headed to Rio riding a wave of momentum and ambition, hunting for nothing short of Olympic gold. She and Provancha entered the medal race in first place, with fierce rival Hannah Mills sitting close behind.
Haeger had already beaten Mills in the test event. But when the starting gun sounded, she couldn't do it again.
Haeger is blunt about what happened next. “I totally choked,” she says - it’s the honest admission of someone who’s come to terms with the bitter disappointment and frustration which followed.
Mills took gold - Haeger didn’t podium at all.
Many Olympic athletes - including medal winners - struggle to overcome the silence that follows an Olympic Games. But the abrupt ending to Haeger’s Olympic dream and the aftermath that followed was ‘brutal’. “I’m obviously very proud that I went, but my recollection of it isn’t positive,” she says, “It always brings tears to my eyes.”
The experience ‘completely crushed’ Haeger’s racing appetite, resulting in her immediate retirement from the sport.
Bruised, she started again from scratch, returning to ‘fun sailing’ on small, fast foiling boats like the WASZP and Moth. There was no competition, no pressure, no racing. “I needed to find my love for sailing again and I was just sailing for me for a long time.”
Alongside ripping around on the water, Haeger started a new career in sports marketing, married Canadian Olympic sailor Luke Ramsay and had two kids. At the beginning of SailGP’s third season, Haeger accompanied Ramsay to Bermuda, where he tried out for the Canadian team.
With her daughter in tow, Haeger got chatting to driver Phil Robertson. “He was asking what kind of sailing I did and I was telling him all about the fun stuff - the wing foiling and the WASZPs,” Haeger recalls.
With her experience on foiling boats, Haeger piqued Robertson’s interest. “He asked if I wanted to get back into competitive sailing,” Haeger says, “and mentally, I was just ready at that point to get back in.” While Ramsay missed out on a role onboard, Haeger was called up to join the team as strategist at Season 4’s event in Saint-Tropez.
"I’M VERY SINGULARLY FOCUSED ON THE GOAL OF WINNING, AND SAILGP IS THE PINNACLE OF THE SPORT"
At this point, Haeger had a three-year-old daughter and a son aged just six months, but she wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass her by. She flew from her home in Vancouver to her parents’ home in Wisconsin, dropped off her son and flew straight onto the event in France.
“It was quite a logistical challenge,” she says in an understatement. Haeger stepped on board the F50 for the first time in Saint-Tropez, with fully foiling ‘breezy’ conditions gracing practice day.
Her first memories of the boat are visceral and sharp.
“I remember coming up to a mark and Phil [Robertson, Canada driver] turning back to me and pointing to a handle on the edge of the cockpit,” Haeger says. “I nodded, held onto it and that’s when he turned the boat - that was the first time of feeling the G-Forces on the F50.”
Haeger had gone fast on boats before, she says, but ‘there is no perception’ of the F50’s speed without experiencing it. “It’s just different,” she says.
That first event in Saint-Tropez was a baptism of fire. Canada and Spain dramatically collided in the first fleet race, earning Canada an 8-point penalty. “That was my first ever race day and my first ever race,” Haeger laughs.
Since then, Haeger has been ‘honing’ her strategist skills on the F50 and continues to juggle looking after her kids while racing around the world, as well as running her own sports marketing firm. At home in Vancouver, she and Ramsay spend their time introducing their kids to the pursuits of skiing and mountain biking in the local mountains.
And when it comes to sailing, the devastation of those dark Olympic days is firmly in the past. A new day dawned with SailGP.
“For me, I’m singularly focused on winning SailGP - it’s the pinnacle of the sport.”
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