SAILING HANNAH

The last few days have reminded me who I am.

Not my job title. Not the meetings, the governance, the flights or the endless stream of emails that seem to define so much of my life. They’ve reminded me of the person beneath all of that. Someone who gets tired, someone who worries and, perhaps most importantly, someone who has spent so long protecting the people around her that she forgot to protect herself.

Lately I’ve been running on empty. The headaches have become more frequent, my eyesight has been playing tricks on me and, somewhere along the way, I stopped listening to what my body has been trying to tell me. Like so many people who care deeply about what they do, I convinced myself I’d deal with my own health tomorrow because today there was another athlete to support, another event to deliver, another budget to defend and another problem to solve.

Then this week I was told that, in conversations I wasn’t part of, I had been described as “useless.”

I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt.

Not because I questioned my ability, but because leadership doesn’t stop you being human. Words still land.

For a few hours, I let one careless word outweigh years of evidence.

Then I remembered that evidence doesn’t disappear because someone chooses not to see it.

The work is still there.

The Championships are still there.

The opportunities are still there.

The future we’re building is still there.

And so am I.

What struck me most wasn’t the comment itself. It was how easy it is to dismiss years of work that happened almost entirely out of sight. People see a championship, but they don’t see the years spent fighting to stop it disappearing. They see opportunities for sailors with a disability, but they don’t see the battles that made those opportunities possible. They see a programme, but they don’t see how hard it was to build one.

When I accepted this role, there wasn’t a thriving Para Inclusive Sailing programme waiting for me. For a while, there wasn’t a team.

There was just me.

I took this job because I wanted to serve. Not myself, but our sport and, more importantly, sailors with a disability who deserved better opportunities than they had been given.

So I stopped waiting for someone else to build the future.

I created the World Sailing Inclusive Championships because I believed our sport needed more than another world championship. It needed a catalyst for change. It needed to bring together sailors with a disability, inclusive sailing, emerging nations, classifier development, coach education and genuine international collaboration. It needed to prove that inclusion wasn’t an add-on to sailing, but part of its future.

That vision was questioned. The strategy was questioned. The investment was questioned. More than once, the Championships themselves were questioned.

So I got to work.

I fought for budgets that didn’t exist. I fought to be heard when it would have been easier for people to look the other way. I fought to keep the Championships alive when it would have been easier to let them disappear. I fought for a vision that many doubted because I believed the future of our sport depended on it.

Eventually Leo joined me and, for the first time, it no longer felt like I was carrying the programme alone. Since then, incredible colleagues, volunteers, classifiers, Member National Authorities, athletes and friends have helped turn that vision into something far bigger than any one person could ever achieve.

But I won’t pretend the journey has been easy.

I’ve spent years carrying this programme uphill. Not alone, but I have been pulling on the rope from the very beginning, and I have earned the right to be proud of how far we’ve come.

People often mistake kindness for weakness. They mistake collaboration for compliance and patience for surrender. Over the last few years I’ve realised they’re all the same mistake. They come from assuming that because someone chooses not to react, they don’t see what’s happening around them.

They’re wrong.

I’ve learned that leadership isn’t about answering every criticism or chasing every rumour. It’s about deciding what deserves your energy and having the discipline to leave the rest behind. For years I thought that discipline was costing me something. This week I realised it wasn’t.

It was building something.

The exhaustion, the setbacks, the constant pressure, the whispered conversations and the moments where I’ve questioned whether I had anything left to give haven’t made me weaker. They’ve made me harder to shake. They’ve taught me where my values are, what I’m prepared to defend and, perhaps most importantly, what simply isn’t worth my time.

I used to think strength meant standing in front of every battle.

Now I know it means choosing the right ones.

My shields are up now, not because I’m expecting a fight around every corner, but because experience has taught me that leadership isn’t just about believing in people. It’s also about recognising when belief needs to be matched with boundaries. Those are lessons I wish I’d never needed to learn, but I’m grateful that I have.

I don’t have anything left to prove. The work speaks for itself. The World Sailing Inclusive Championships exist. Sailors with a disability have opportunities that didn’t exist before. Para Inclusive Sailing has a strategy, a direction and a future that people once said wasn’t possible. I’m proud of that, and I’ve earned the right to be.

If I’ve changed, perhaps that’s the biggest change of all.

I’m still the same person who believes in collaboration, who wants to build bridges instead of burning them and who will always choose service over recognition. But I’ve stopped believing that endless patience is the same as good leadership.

This journey has taught me that resilience isn’t about never getting hurt. It’s about deciding what you do next.

For me, it’s always been the same choice.

I roll my sleeves up.

I get in the mud.

I do the hard yards.

I build.

I’ve never believed leadership is about standing on the sidelines pointing at the work. I’ve always believed it’s about getting your hands dirty, carrying your share of the load and leaving something better than you found it.

When people say something can’t be done, I get to work.

When opportunities don’t exist, I build them.

When programmes are questioned, I strengthen them.

When people underestimate me, I don’t waste my energy trying to convince them they’re wrong.

I keep working.

I keep building.

Because that’s who I am.

So if you choose to underestimate me, that’s entirely your decision.

Just remember that every time it’s happened before, I’ve quietly gone away, rolled my sleeves up and built something better.

I’ve become rather good at that.