It was a pretty poignant turn of year in the Mills household as we toasted the start of the 2012 Olympic year at home in Cardiff with the rest of my family.

Silver at the ISAF World Championships in Perth proved to be a pleasing end to an amazing year, especially as we went into the regatta having had some time off beforehand and feeling a bit underprepared.

It definitely showed we had been out of the boat at times as our racing communication was a bit off sometimes, but we knew it was going to be a week we had to dig deep and we did just that. To have been able to grind out the results we needed to head into the medal race still in with a shout of a medal was awesome, so we were really pleased to win silver.

Straight from Perth a few of us including Team Volvo sailor Paul Goodison headed to Bali for what was meant to be a really chilled holiday. But Bali is a really stressful place.

You expect it to be this beautiful tranquil place and a lot of it is, but the traffic can be insane and we also had to be really careful about what we ate. We had a wicked time though, surfing, well attempting to surf, lots and lots. We also spent heaps of time in the markets and did a Secret Santa for each other for Christmas Day.

We got back to Britain on December 30 and I headed straight home to Wales to give my family all the Christmas presents I'd bought them in the Bali markets!

I was exhausted so it was lovely just to spend a low key New Year's Eve with my family at my cousin's chilling out and watching the fireworks. Given that this time last year Saskia [Clark] and I hadn't even started sailing together, talk inevitably turned to the Olympics and how exciting this year is going to be.

I was only at home for a few days before I left the country again, this time for St Moritz and our team cross-country ski camp. It was the first one I had ever done and I absolutely loved it, it was so much fun but really hard work.

I've skied quite a bit before so I got the hang of cross-country quite quickly but the skis were so slippy it was ridiculous. Especially downhill, everyone was falling over and how funny we all found it seeing each other go flying never wore off the whole time. I was actually a bit sad to come home.


After only four days at home we flew off to the States for training ahead of the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Sas and I are still a relatively new pair so we think it is really important that we get as much racing in as we can between now and the Games. The plan at the moment is to do Miami, the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma, the 470 Worlds in Spain in May and maybe the Europeans in June.

We will have to be careful about getting the right balance in peaking for only a couple of events so that we go into the Olympics with the right amount of training and racing behind us. But we have an experienced coach in double Olympic silver medallist Joe Glanfield with us and are confident that our programme is equally rigorous and flexible enough to give us the best chance at the Games.

Hannah Mills is a British sailor who was selected, along with Olympian Saskia Clark, to sail in the 470 women's class for Team GB in the London 2012 Olympics.