Sustaining the dream

Ask Hannah Mills about the unthinkable – that the Olympics might be cancelled – and she replies evenly: “Obviously that thought crosses your mind, but the only thing you can do is to push it aside and just say ‘it’s irrelevant’. You can’t stop training, you can’t stop being motivated.

“If the Games don’t happen it’ll be a disaster. Of course there are doubts, but you push them aside.”

A gold in Tokyo next summer would make Hannah Mills, aged 32, the most successful female Olympic sailor of all time, having won silver in London and gold in Rio with Saskia Clark. The image of her and Clark embracing on the podium in Rio was one of the most moving