Hear Her Roar

Six incredible sportswomen take flight with Richard Mille's first ladies sports watch, the uncompromisingly technical yet resolutely feminine RM 07-04 Automatic Sport.

- YANNI TAN

Performance, precision, speed, strength, endurance, flexibility, rigour, drive, technique, optimisation... Terms used to describe sports are often familiar vernacular in watchmaking, making fine bedfellows of both worlds. At the pinnacle of technical watch manufacturing is Richard Mille, which has long been an ardent patron of some of the best athletes in the world renowned for their technical prowess.

Joining the ranks of sporting superhumans like Rafael Nadal, Fernando Alonso, Bubba Watson and Yohan Blake in the Richard Mille family is a new generation of achievers. Among them are not just the remarkable male talents of Sebastian Korda and Charles Leclerc, but also a slew of exceptional, barrier-breaking female warriors.

Honouring women is not new to Richard Mille. The gentleman founder, who launched his eponymous brand in 1999 and his first timepiece in 2001, created the brand's first ladies model in 2005. Named RM 007 Automatic, the gem-studded wristwatch married mechanical hyper-technology with feminine design codes, combining beauty, ergonomics and technology in a superlative manner on a par as the men's creations.

Over the years, Richard Mille has also consistently inducted various outstanding female personalities into its rarefied circle of "friends", one of whom is Oscar-winning actress and action star Michelle Yeoh. To challenge the status quo in motorsport, which the founder is deeply passionate about, the brand conceived the Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille in France in the same year the company was founded.

In 2019, it also launched its very own statement-making Richard Mille Racing Team with an all-women trio, whose original members of Beitske Visser, Sophia Flörsch and Tatiana Calderón have since handed the wheel over to a new mixed-gender team including French ingenue Lilou Wadoux.

NEW BLOOD