When Nathan Outteridge was assembling his crew for the Artemis SailGP campaign, he went looking for one of the sharpest strategic minds in professional foiling. He found her in Julia Gross, whose appointment as strategist for the new Artemis SailGP Team has drawn widespread praise from within the sport.
The Swede brings composure under pressure, tactical intelligence, and genuine foiling experience that any new team entering professional sailing's most demanding league would envy. She first drew international attention as helm for the Swedish Challenge in the Puig Women's America's Cup, sharing the wheel with Ida Svensson. The team topped their qualifying group and reached the semifinals, a significant breakthrough for Sweden's emerging generation of female racing sailors.
Her SailGP credentials were further sharpened in 2025, when she stepped into the Red Bull Italy SailGP team at Portsmouth as a replacement for strategist Maëlle Frascari, who was recovering from surgery. What followed was far from a stopgap performance. Gross helped Red Bull Italy to their best season result yet, finishing fifth overall and recording several top-three finishes in fleet racing. The contribution was measured and clinical, seamlessly absorbed into one of professional sailing's most demanding team environments.
For Gross, the Artemis role carries a sense of homecoming as much as a new challenge. She has long been part of the broader Artemis Racing family and continues to work closely with the Royal Swedish Yacht Club (KSSS) on building clear pathways for women in performance sailing.
Her appointment also adds another name to what is becoming a notable pattern across the SailGP fleet. Hannah Mills provides tactical command for Emirates GBR, Liv Mackay handles strategic communication for New Zealand, and Natasha Bryant brings analytical consistency to the Australia team. Those three nations occupied the leading positions in the 2025 championship, and in each cockpit a woman sits at the nerve-centre of decision-making when racing is at its most intense.
The picture broadens considerably across the rest of the fleet. Nicole van der Velden fills the role for Spain, Manon Audinet for France, Maëlle Frascari for Italy, Anna Barth for Germany, Annie Haegar and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance for Canada, Katja Salskov-Iverson and Anne-Marie Windom for Denmark, and Maud Jayet for Switzerland. The cumulative weight of those names tells its own story. Women are no longer occasional presences in SailGP cockpits. They are central to how teams think through problems, plan for conditions, and execute race by race, and Julia Gross joining Artemis is the latest confirmation of that shift.
