Hans Henken's Long Path to SailGP

New York Times

13-03-2025

Seeing catamarans hit speeds unthinkable a generation ago, an aspiring next-gen sailor might wonder: How do people get to play in Rolex SailGP? Who brings the skill plus discipline plus teamwork plus a vein of fearlessness?
As the league prepares to race in Los Angeles this weekend, topping the list of answers to that question would be the Olympic class 49er skiff. There are now five 49er medalists racing in SailGP.
Mere sailors need not apply for 49er racing. The experience feels like an emergency that begins when the sails go up. Left to itself, the boat falls over. Speed builds stability. Between two people acting as one, the sailing is a form of ballet danced to an unpredictable score — while perched outside a narrow hull that weighs less than the two crew, hanging from a wire and drinking spray.
Succeed in a 49er, and you prove your reflexes and mettle for SailGP's F50 catamarans. And the gumption to tackle a steep learning curve.
That was the path of Hans Henken, who is now the flight controller for the U.S. SailGP team on its F50 catamaran.
The flight controller uses the foils to lift the boat and 'fly' it above the surface. Eliminating friction leads to very high speeds that demand reactions in fractions of a second. 'It's rewarding when you get it right, but it's easy to get it wrong,' Henken said. 'When the boat crashes, there is nowhere to hide. Sort of like being a goalie in soccer.'
To get to this point, Henken soldiered through the patchwork American system of Olympic sailing for 17 years before he won a bronze medal at the 2024 Olympics, then honors in February as the newest Rolex Yachtsman of the Year along with his crew mate Ian Barrows.
Henken did not attend the ceremony, however. SailGP commanded his presence in Australia. The Olympic sailor Helena Scutt, married to Henken, accepted for him, continuing a story that has woven them together since their high school years. Now they are settling into a new home in Long Beach, Calif., which will host Olympic sailing in 2028. It is next door to the Port of Los Angeles, host to this weekend's Rolex SailGP event.
A circuit for foiling catamarans wasn't even imagined when Henken and Scutt were racing against each other as teenagers in 29ers, the trainer skiff, in Southern California and Henken was already visualizing an Olympic medal. Today, each has multiple degrees from Stanford. She was most recently a mechatronics engineer for American Magic at the America's Cup and now looks toward campaigning a 49erFX with Hans's sister, Paris. They were 10th in 2016.
At Stanford, Henken sailed with honors, and college sailing is a rewarding team experience, but it plays out mostly in sturdy little dinghies designed 70 years ago. The skills do not build toward sailing a high-performance skiff. For an Olympic hopeful, Henken said, graduation meant being 'four years behind' other countries that professionalize young sailors. He discovered that he also had to become a campaign fund-raiser and manager 'and that is just as hard as the sailing. None of us sign up for that.'
SailGP came along in 2019 with a dose of glamour and an opportunity to earn some money while continuing as the full-time sailor that an Olympic campaign demands. His driver on the U.S. SailGP team, Taylor Canfield, said, 'Medaling in the Olympics is one of the hardest things to accomplish in sport. Imagine the self-discipline. And Hans brings a scientist's view from his aeronautical background. Go figure. He's in charge of flying the boat.'
Henken was a few weeks beyond his first wedding anniversary in 2023 when SailGP arrived in Taranto, Italy, with the veteran Jimmy Spithill driving the American boat.
On day one, Henken said, 'Our headsets malfunctioned, and Jimmy and I got out of sync rounding a mark, turning downwind.'
Turning downwind loads up the wing overhead and presses the bows down. The flight controller counters by raising the ride height. 'I went for it, but Jimmy waited an instant to clear a wave,' Henken said. 'That word was lost.'
And control was lost. The boat pitched up, then nose-dived. The plunge washed Henken out of his foxhole. His helmet struck the aft cockpit railing. He was knocked out cold.
The overboard alert flashed with eight boats still at speed, with foils capable of slicing off a limb or worse. Henken was found, still unconscious. He left the hospital three days later with a broken sternum and a severe concussion. It was another two days before he was cleared to travel, with four months to the Olympic selection trials, and counting.
Henken took a break to recover, but rejoined Barrows on the water only five weeks later, sailing hurt but feeling pressured. They had points to prove. 'We came away assured by what we got out of it, the mind-set, the boat handling,' Henken said.
Rested further, but pushed hard at the trials in Miami, Fla., in January 2024, Henken and Barrows made the team and won their bronze in August.
The medal completed a long journey for Henken. Six-year-old Hans may have looked like any tiny child in a tiny boat, but the way he remembers it, he was always questioning the way the boat worked with the sail and the wind, and how, and why, thinking like the engineer he would become. Now it is natural for that engineer to 'spend a lot of time in the data center' at SailGP.
With all boats monitored and all data centralized, there are fine points to be discovered, but the U.S. team has much to prove. Henken said they were 'looking to find our rhythm again' after sitting out the Sydney event with a boat that was damaged under tow. That was not the turnaround that the U.S. team needed to quiet trash talk from a last-place finish in New Zealand. The only thing to do about that is, go race.