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New York Times
4 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Hans Henken is the SailGP star who wants to become an astronaut: ‘I still have those aspirations'
Shooting for the stars and achieving the extraordinary is nothing new for elite athletes who reach the pinnacle of any sport. Hans Henken is one of the world's finest sailors; an Olympic medalist last year, a member of the U.S. SailGP team, and a Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. But he is a man whose ambitions aren't restricted to sea level. Advertisement 'If you ask a five-year-old what they want to do when they grow up, everyone says they want to become an astronaut. I still have those aspirations,' the 33-year-old Californian tells The Athletic over the phone from his home in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, ahead of this weekend's SailGP Grand Prix in Germany. Henken's is not an idle dream. The Stanford University graduate has a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. 'I was really drawn to it, obviously, because of my childhood dream, and the astronautical engineering is one of many prerequisites that NASA looks for in terms of their application process,' Henken says. 'Part of me just wants to work on really challenging projects that require the nth degree of precision. And I think there's nothing more precise than trying to build a rocket that goes into space.' For now, however, his focus is on the current Rolex SailGP season, a high-octane close-to-shore championship, and improving his U.S. team's fortunes. The current campaign has proven heavy going for driver Taylor Canfield, team boss and strategist Mike Buckley and the rest of the crew. After a promising third place at the first event in Dubai last November, the Americans have struggled and are currently last in the 12-team standings. In the six-member crew, Henken is the flight controller, managing the ride height of the boat above the water, aiming to avoid any costly nosedives or crashes. He has in the past likened it to being a soccer goalkeeper, given that there is nowhere to hide if things go wrong. Team USA constantly reminds fans they are all working hard to get better. They have access to the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Santa Monica, California, where its personnel spend time going through physical and mental training programs, as well as picking up ideas from athletes in other sports. Advertisement 'I still go, minimum, once a week,' says Henken, who, along with teammate Ian Barrows, won America's sole sailing medal at the Paris Olympics last year. 'It's a bit of a long drive from my place in Long Beach, but the coolest thing about Red Bull is the diversity of their athletes and the diversity of sports. I've been asking some of the extreme-sports athletes how they train for whatever crazy thing they do, and they're like, 'Oh, we don't do a lot of training physically. We do a lot of visualization, because you only get one go at it.' 'In things like skydiving or base jumping, they only do it so often, so they have to use a lot of visualization techniques. I think there's a lot to pull from that kind of mentality and put it towards SailGP because we have a similar challenge of minimal training time.' The main question the team has to answer is how to raise performance levels when practice time is so limited. The Americans are experiencing a level of publicity and scrutiny that sailors haven't previously experienced and would probably rather do their learning away from the spotlight, but there's no avoiding it because the one thing they severely lack is time on their F50 catamarans. There's no other boat that prepares you for the high-tech, foiling F50 than the F50 itself. Access is generally limited to just one practice day before each two-day race weekend. With 12 events across the current season, plus a few extra training days, it adds up to just 42 days. 'We're talking 24 race days plus a training day before each event, plus a few extra, so you probably get 18 training days,' Henken said. The lack of training time stands in stark contrast to Henken's decade on the Olympic trail. A bronze medalist in the men's skiff competition at Paris 2024, he has taken time away from that scene to focus on SailGP, a relative newcomer in sailing in its fifth season, and is weighing up whether to compete on home waters in Los Angeles at the 2028 Games. Advertisement 'We campaigned for multiple years, spending over 250 days per year on the water to go racing for five days at the Olympics,' he says. 'Here in SailGP, we don't count days on the water, we count minutes on the water. It literally is 'Minutes matter', and if we're getting an extra 20, or even just 10, minutes at the end of a day, it really goes a long way towards learning new things about performance.' With the bulk of their time on the F50 spent racing in the heat of battle, there is little option but to try new ideas and test the limits while going full bore at up to 50 knots, side by side alongside 11 rivals. Ahead of the New York Grand Prix in June, Henken talked about using that time to 'push the envelope on performance.' 'If you're never pushing to what you think the limit is, you're just gonna get passed by boats,' he said. 'You might be beating another team because they're pushing the limits and crashing, while you're keeping it safe and consistent. You might be beating them for the first three events, but by event five, six, seven, or maybe even the next season, at some point, they're going to go past you. 'Because the time frame's so short, you have to make rapid decisions really, really quickly on how you're going to utilize that time. If you don't do it that way, you end up spending too much time not exploring your options. And then you kind of get stuck in a No-Man's Land of not really committing to one process or another, and you never really quite find out if it was a performance gain or not.' Current leaders of Season 5 are the New Zealanders, led by driver Pete Burling and his wing trimmer and long-time sidekick Blair Tuke. Together they won three Olympic medals in the 49er skiff, including gold at Rio 2016, and have helped win the past three America's Cups for their country. They are the hottest properties in sailing, but Henken points out that for all their undoubted prowess, even Burling and Tuke have had to serve their apprenticeship in SailGP. Advertisement 'Pete and Blair are the duo that everyone wants to be. Everyone wants to be exactly who they are because they are winning at the highest level and everything that they do,' says Henken, recalling the New Zealanders' difficult start in SailGP. 'They come into the league in Season Two. They push the envelope, they're learning the boat. They're not winning events. But by Season Three, Season Four, all of a sudden, they've figured it out. They've pushed hard, and they've used that time and training at every regatta to be able to find that. 'I think right now, our team is basically trying to find what that (winning formula) is in racing, and it's really, really challenging.' For Henken and his teammates, the next opportunity to test their progress comes this weekend in Sassnitz, a town on northern Germany's Baltic Sea coast. Some crew changes are in the offing for the eighth event of the 2025 season, and even Henken did not know if he would be on the boat this time. 'I imagine that will probably be announced about five minutes before the first race… We've been doing a lot of rotation (in training), a lot of changes. Not one person has been on the boat all day long,' he says. 'We're going to wake up on Saturday, the roster is going to get filled out, that's going to be the A team and they're going to go racing.' For more SailGP, follow Global Sports on The Athletic app via the Discover tab Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
CBS News
22-03-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
SailGP brings high-intensity catamaran racing back to San Francisco Bay
For one high-octane weekend, the San Francisco Bay is once again transforming into one of the fastest and most dynamic racetracks in the world for the Oracle San Francisco Sail Grand Prix . Towering hydrofoil sailboats, capable of reaching speeds over 60 miles per hour, will slice through the water in what has become more than just a sailing competition — it's a spectacle of technology, athleticism, and strategy. At the heart of Team USA 's campaign in the SailGP series is Hans Henken, a Stanford University graduate and aeronautical engineer who has returned to waters that feel like home. "San Francisco is an amazing venue. It kind of has every aspect a sailor wants, it has really challenging conditions, it has beautiful geography, it has the current, everything you could possibly ask for in a sailboat race it definitely has here," Henken told CBS News Bay Area. Henken's background in aeronautical engineering is no coincidence. The multi-million-dollar catamarans used in SailGP are closer to aircraft than traditional sailboats. They rise above the surface of the water on hydrofoils, reducing drag and pushing the limits of what's possible on water. "We're still utilizing the wind to go up wind, downwind, tack, and jibe," Henken explained. "But the sailing we're doing at SailGP is at the highest level. It's the most technologically advanced boats, the most challenging boats to sail and the speeds is probably what makes the biggest difference. On top of obviously the technology and the hydro-foiling." A recent bronze medalist in the Paris Olympics, Henken is aiming for the top of the podium in SailGP — and doing it in front of a home crowd as his Santa Rosa-based parents cheer him on from the stands. Racing on the unpredictable waters of San Francisco Bay requires split-second decisions, precise coordination with teammates, and the ability to read the ever-changing wind and wave conditions. "It's really flat over there and starting to get choppy," Henken said ahead of a practice run Friday. "That's going to play a big role for sure." But for Henken and his fellow sailors, SailGP is about more than just crossing the finish line first. It represents the future of sailing. The Oracle San Francisco Sail Grand Prix takes place this weekend.
New York Times
13-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Hans Henken's Long Path to SailGP
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.
