Montgomery Wins Women’s Sailing Singlehanded National Championship

This past Sunday junior sailor Sophia Montgomery won the 2024 ICSA Women’s Singlehanded National Championship in St. Petersburg, Fl.. With a score of 49, Montgomery emerged victorious for the second time, bouncing back from her year off in 2023 following her 2022 title-clinching performance as a sophomore.

Montgomery attributed her victory to a solid performance across all 12 races, which she was able to do given her deftness at navigating a variety of weather conditions.

“I was able to stay the most consistent, which is why I finished on top - not because I specialized in a particular condition, but just being able to be fast and finish well consistently,” the junior described “So even though I didn't win all the races or very many races at all - I only won two - I was in the front.”

Before she was Olympic material, however, Montgomery was a young sailor looking to make her mark on the sport.

Montgomery is a native of Bangkok, Thailand, where she began sailing at age eight. Montgomery was inspired to pursue the sport of sailing because her father participated in club sailing at UCLA, and was a huge proponent of his daughter following in his footsteps.

The junior explained that her parents enrolled her in sailing at a young age, hoping it would instill lifelong skills that extended beyond the physical aspects of the sport.

“I think my parents rationale is that sailing teaches children independence because you're just alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean,” Montgomery explained. “I ended up really liking it and it was a family activity that gave me an extra community in my childhood.”

Although Montgomery has been sailing for nearly 16 years now, collegiate sailing in the US is very different from the sailing Montgomery learned growing up in Thailand.

“College sailing is quite different from international sailing, and the sailing that I’ve been doing for the last year,” Montgomery said. “Our first weekend in the single handed - the qualifiers were like a shock to my system. I didn't remember the rules and I was doing really risky things because that's how I would sail in an international fleet, and that's simply not how it works in college sailing.”

While sailing from the outside is clearly a physically challenging endeavor, Montgomery highlighted how the mental difficulties associated with sailing are often underestimated, emphasizing its complexity as a sailor must learn to balance both the athletic and mental challenge.

“I think the beauty of sailing is how complex it is - there's so many layers to the sport,” Montgomery said. “It's very physical, even if it may not look like it - you use your entire body to make the boat go fast. But because you're on the water, sailing with nature, it's not just about how fast your boat can go, but within the shortest distance.”

Montgomery’s absence from last year’s title race was not due to inadequate training or an unsuccessful season; rather, it was because she took a gap year to prepare for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“I took a gap year because while I can train at Harvard, it's a hard school,” Montgomery explained. “And I wasn't really improving – not nearly at the rate that I would need to be to compete with the other Asian girls to earn a spot at the Asian qualifier for the Olympics.”

Thanks to intense training over her gap year, Montgomery represented Thailand at the 2024 Olympic games. Montgomery secured her spot after finishing fourth in the ILCA 6 Class at the Asian Sailing Championship in December of 2023. Over five days of Olympic competition, Montgomery completed nine races and scored 233 points, ultimately finishing in 27th place in the women’s dinghy event.

Though Montgomery’s Olympic competition spanned just five days, her time in France began over two months earlier, as early acclimatization to local weather conditions is essential in ensuring that she would be able to reach her optimal levels of performance. This prolonged training period and intense pressures of the Olympics challenged Montgomery’s love for sailing, but she ultimately emerged with a deeper passion for the sport

“I think the thing that I liked the most about my time in France was that I fell in love with the sport again,” Montgomery said. “I've never had so many emotions so compressed into such little time. I think that my main takeaway was that even after having sailed all year, and then for so many days in a row, and being so completely tired, that on the last day, all I wanted to do was go back out and sail again. I just love sailing.”

Although Montgomery’s time in Paris reignited her love and passion for the sport, she approached the ICSA Women’s Singlehanded Championship with some hesitation after a long break from sailing following her time in Paris.

“Training hasn't been as rigorous as it was in previous years, and nothing compared to my gap but I'm really happy that I'm still able to do school and sailing at the same time and that it was enough to still win - I was a little bit concerned, but it was enough. ” Montgomery said.

“There were a large mix of conditions throughout the championship. Really light and lumpy days and then some pretty windy days,” Montgomery furthered, highlighting the turbulent weather that only added to her stress heading into the competition following the more truncated training season.

While this past weekend marked the conclusion of Montgomery’s fall season, she will now shift her focus to team racing, as the spring season is dedicated entirely to this discipline. The junior is not as well-versed in the team sailing competitions, having focused almost entirely on solo sailing competitions before attending Harvard, but will still be a force on the water.

“I learned team racing when I came into college and so I'm not an expert, I never have been,” Montgomery revealed. “Now that I've been away from it, I am relearning team racing.”

Despite starting from a disadvantage stemming from her inexperience, Montgomery has high hopes for her team for this upcoming spring season.

“I am really excited to see what the team is going to do this spring,” Montgomery said. “Our team is pretty amazing at team racing. I'm really excited for them.”

In conversation about her hopes outside of her collegiate racing career, Montgomery then spoke to her own personal goals:

“I’d like to go to LA in 2028,” Montgomery said with confidence.

While the fall season might have come to a conclusion for the sailing team, Montgomery will be a sailor to watch this spring as she works toward achieving her goal of becoming a two-time Olympian at the 2028 LA Olympics.

Staff writer Natalie T. Weiner can be reached at natalie.weiner@thecrimson.com