‘Closing’ clause boosts the Rebel Cause
Andy Rice | March 7, 2008Last week’s ISAF Word of the Week was URGENT. Didn’t we have fun with that one! This week’s ISAF Word of the Week is CLOSING. Early signs suggest this week’s word will be even more popular with the SailJuice readership.
Below is an excerpt from Item 7 of the Minutes from ISAF Executive’s meeting in Geneva last month. You can download the full Minutes by clicking this link: isaf-exec-meeting-minutes-feb-08.pdf
Published two days ago, this clause has not gone unnoticed by SailJuice readers, with some of you having already posted your response to this. I’m just back from a trip to Lanzarote to see the Ericsson Racing Team’s preparations for the Volvo Ocean Race, hence the lack of posts here recently, but thanks to those of you who have kept the fires burning at SailJuice in the Comments section these past days.
The published Minutes from ISAF Executive’s February meeting in Geneva suggests ISAF Executive is not prepared to entertain any further discussion about the 10 Events decided for the Olympic Regatta in Weymouth 2012. Item 7 suggests a few people are burying their heads in the sand and hoping the problem will go away. In the current climate of unrest, this seems like rather wishful thinking.
What Nick Dewhirst said…
Nick Dewhirst of the UK Catamaran Racing Association sent an email to SailJuice on the subject:
Item 7 (c): ISAF Executive now appears to have boxed itself into the following corner. Having unambiguously declared this is not urgent (7 (c) (v), and gratuitously confirmed that the matter would have been urgent had it not already been decided (7 (c) (vi)), it concluded that the matter was now closed (7 (c) (iv)), implying that it is off the agenda both for the Mid-Year Meeting (as not urgent) and November Meeting (as closed). There is no misunderstanding this as the minute continues “and forwarding the decision to the Committees and Secretariat for implementation”.
However a matter is not closed until the deadline for appeals has passed and if there are any valid appeals, then it is not closed until these have been resolved. Most organisations have appeal processes and indeed so does ISAF. For example the deadline is 21 days for its Anti-Doping Regulation. Indeed there is a specific appeal process for this issue, in Regulation 16.1.3 (b). Importantly no deadline exists. It refers to another vote by Council and the next meeting is the Mid-Year Meeting, barring an Extraordinary Meeting, for which there is no requirement in 16.1.1 (b) relating to Events selection.
Now I am not a lawyer, but my experiences of dealing with UK law tends to confirm common sense plain-English interpretations of what words mean. Imagine holding a prizegiving, knowing that a formal Protest has been lodged but not yet heard, let alone decided!
It seems the Executive is intent on denying members their constitutional right of appeal.
Strong stuff from Nick, but then as an unabashed multihull fanatic, to borrow that saying of Mandy Rice-Davies [no relation, I hasten to add]: “Well, he would, wouldn’t he!”
What Rod Carr said…
So I got in touch with Rod Carr who, by the very nature of his job as RYA Chief Executive, is required to be circumspect about these delicate issues. What did he have to say?
“It doesn’t seem to take account of the submissions that have already been made, nor have they [ISAF Executive] seen what other submissions there might be. You can’t be clairvoyant. It seems a pretty extraordinary thing to say. They could have said, ‘I’d be very surprised if anything stood the test of being urgent,’ but just to say that matter is now closed, that seems odd to me.”
Did Rod think this was how a democratic organisation should deal with these issues?
“I don’t, I don’t, and the other thing is that we know match racing is not closed. We know there are technical issues about the match racing. Everyone knows there are issues about how you qualify, what sort of boats are going to be provided, are there going to be a fleet of boats, is it going to be a J/22, whether the Grade 1 regattas will have boats or not.
“A lot of concerns which are very genuine. What they’ve said to the match racing fleet is, ‘You’d better come back with some proper solutions to these questions, or we might have to resort back to fleet racing.’ So the matter is not closed.
“So why is it ‘not closed’ for match racing, but why is it ‘closed’, say, for the catamarans? This seems to be just a matter of opinion. You can’t have it both ways, in my opinion.”
What message are we meant to take from this?
“I don’t know what message we’re meant to take from this, I don’t know. If it had said something like, ‘We can’t imagine any new facts arising that would make us change our opinion, that weren’t already discussed at the November conference…’ they could have said that, couldn’t they? And that would have been kind of fair, looking at things from their point of view. In other words, ‘We’re not going to reopen this just because the losers would like to reopen it.’ In a way, you’d say, OK, I’ll just about go with that.
“But you can never say, ‘Whatever you say, it’s closed on this subject, but not on the other subject.’ It is absolutely gobsmacking, and they needn’t have said it, and it’s their right to turn it down anyway. Everyone understands that it’s their right, but why prejudice their opinion, why fetter themselves by saying, ‘Whatever they say, the matter is closed.’
“This is us, the French, New Zealand, Australia, Canada – these are major yachting nations – saying, ‘We’d like a review please.’ To actually just say, before you’ve heard the argument, ‘It’s closed,’ doesn’t sound very helpful to me. And to say the matter of Events is closed is not true, because the women’s Events are still open, because they’ve said the matter is still open.”
Now, the chances are, the RYA and its rebel allies are still unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority of ISAF Council members to engineer the revote they are looking for. Which makes the ISAF ‘closed’ stance even more unfathomable. They could have appeared very open and generous on this issue, and still maintained the status quo which they so obviously desire.
As it is, this undemocratic stance (rather apposite, don’t you think, in the aftermath of those Russian ‘democratic’ elections) makes ISAF look increasingly isolated and dismissive of the views of the common sailor.
QUESTION: ISAF Executive should ask itself if the wording of these minutes has strengthened or weakened the opposition to last November’s Olympic vote. And I’d like to ask you the same question. What do YOU think?
How unfortunate the ISAF comments are. It seems like an abdication of the democratic responsibilities endowed on them. If there had been a clear process – exec adopting Events ctee proposals, then it would be justified to say that they had discharged their obligations in a democratic manner. As the situation currently stands there is a definite maybe that we have some flawed personalities leading our sport. This gives a strange feeling. The other issue is that there is no rationality and no explanations given to the exec choice. First order arrogance – the “we know what’s best”. THis draconian and victorian attitude cannot be allowed to continue, and hats off to Rod for standing up for democratic process. In answer to the question, the insanely dictatorial release has weakened isaf exec to a point which must surely be unacceptable and has weakened their position to a point of resignation. Another question – how can ISAF exec be so totalitarian in their approach in these times?
The problem is that the executive committee do have the final say. What makes a committee change its mind? Pressure. The RYA and others who truly see that change is needed for the good of the sport are doing their bit. What can we ordinary sailors do? One suggestion is to organise a ‘referendum’, a petition in as many countries as possible – all asking the same questions. A simple set of questions -say between 1 and 4 that gives clear unambiguous answers (I hope). That might help. I’d vote.
I do not understand why they are playing with the dreams of young sailors by putting the sport at risk of being throne out of the olympics just because they want to see the most elitest part of the sport in the olympics Why!!!
One of things that was initially mentioned about how this all came about was the Charlie Cook issue – and then Charlie goes on the defensive in USA ‘butt, however, only for the part about his orchestrating the agenda coming up – NOT for the way the initial backroom deal was done.
Forget about ISAF for a moment, and start focusing on the USA process that led to all this. Those of us in the US were appalled at the way the US Olympic Sailing Cmte just announced what they wanted at a USSA Board meeting just weeks before the Semi-Annual meeting.
What is stunning to me is that the USA is not defined within this article as major sailing country (on that, I completely agree, US Sailing is now just a teaching and coaching licensing business), but yet it is the USA that led the junta to oust the Tornado, and tried to get rid of the Windsurfers.
Several of us have considered various alternatives to go after several people within US Sailing – on one hand, we care, on the other hand, probably our time is better spent working on things that make sailing more fun for more people. The more stunts that the likes of Dave Irish – a US Sailing Past President, and ISAF current VP – allow to be pulled upon the sport, the less relevant both US Sailing and ISAF become across the spectrum of the sport.
It would seem that the democratic process is not as democratic as we would like to see it and that ISAF do not want to open a can of worms on the way their voting process went/works. The way the lobbying and independent voters are elected/given process to vote, should be looked into with possible view of voting people on to the Council who truelly represent the demographics of sailing worldwide rather than self interest as from an outsider’s point of view, would seem the case with some given the responsibility of representing the masses.
This harks back to where we had councils in the past, who represented self interest such as Tallin in 1980 and other Nations in other sports since.
Will we see a fair process with arbitration, it now looks likely that we won’t. The losers are sailing as a whole, especially the generation coming through the feeder sqauds, they are the ones that ISAF has really let down and for that alone, they should hang their heads in shame if they are not prepared to at least reconvene to discuss the matter in open council.
the other problem is that the curretn group of events that have been selected are neither appealing to the masses in spectacle nor understanding due to complexity of the match race and will therefore have low value to the media and TV. If we carry on with this vein, we may see 2016 as sailing’s last ever Olympics and this could only be put down to misdirection and poor management of the process and eventual demise of ISAF as we know it. Food for thought and hope, they the council live long enough to see the full extent of the potential damage they may be causing to one of the truelly great sports of the world. Shame on the council for their lack of democratic process.
This is my understanding of the sequence of events:
– The IOC have a set of criteria that they expect all events to meet (universality, medal spread, media appeal and nation participation – not sure if there is a hierachy to these?)
– The ISAF vote on the events
- Specialist committee set up to recommend events
- Council get final vote
- There was a last-minute change of voting procedure
- No information quantifying the universality, previous and potential medal spread, media appeal or nation participation of the possible different events was available to the council members prior to the vote – ie vote was subjective, not objective
- Council voted against committee recommendations (but not an evidence-based vote)
– Selected events do not meet the criteria in the views of RYA (host nation), YA, YNZ (and others?) who write letters of appeal to ISAF
– ISAF decree that the controversy does not warrant ‘urgent’ attention
– ISAF declare matter closed
So, in answer to your question, Andy, I think the ISAF have done themselves no favours at all with the wording of those minutes and will have strengthened opposition the decisons of last November. Is it possible to set up a vote of no confidence in the leadership?
[...] sent me an email earlier this evening which casts a different and rather more encouraging light on the ‘closing’ clause, the one that has caused such controversy these past days. On further reading of the clause in [...]
If you are all going to argue this all the way, at least start getting your facts straight.
“If we carry on with this vein, we may see 2016 as sailing’s last ever Olympics and this could only be put down to misdirection and poor management of the process and eventual demise of ISAF as we know it.”
What??
This is nothing but a myth put about by scare-mongering two hulled supporters who want to reverse a democratic decision they do not agree with. Show me where IOC categorically said that it was looking to remove sailing from the Olympics.
I don’t much go in for politics, but as far as I can see ISAF are following their constitution to the letter, whether right or wrong. If the voting process is so wrong, how many NAs are making proposals to the November conference to change them for the better in the future?
I suspect the reason the Multihull was binned was because the Tornado is a extremely expensive, limited appeal, dying class. If the vote had been for a Hobie or something similar, which all those developing nations the big five are supposed to be speaking for could actually afford, then the vote may have gone a different way.
Voting on event and then class a year later makes no sense. It would be inconceivable for the track events to include a “two legged, short distance, straight line, lane limited, sprint” and then a year later to assign the 100m sprint to that.
I would even suggest that hardly anyone actually votes on the events for the sake of events, they vote on the classes that fill those events. Having a two step process just wastes time and effort.
Dear J
Please do READ the report at http://sailjuiceblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/isaf_events_report-ukcra.pdf
You will then be better able to judge whether the voting process is fair. You can also check out ISAF’s regulations which are available on their website. If you believe that asking Councillors to retrospectively allow Events submissions to be delivered after March 15th when 16.1.2 states that those submissions Must be delivered before March 15th then you can have a different opinion of what following the Consitution to the letter is than I do.
As for scare-mongering and the multihull community trying to overturn a perfectly fair democratic decision – it wasn’t fair – look at the report to thoroughly understand our reasoning, of which Andy’s pointing out of the breaking of Rule 41 is just part of it. It looks and still looks as though there was political manouevring to eliminate the weakest class politically to achieve objectives other than those in the best interests of sailing as a whole.
I keep coming back to one thing; Goran Petersson’ s quote after the Estoril decisionthat the selection of Events demonstrated the modern nature and “the wide range and diversity of sailing”. Excluding a large part of the sport makes this is patently untrue.
We look forward to seeing many more MNA’s make their submissions regarding this matter in short order.
Simon
PS – Please also understand that those of us pushing for the re-instatement of multihulls are by no means purely supporters of the Tornado or any other class. We just want to see multihulls back where they belong – as an Olympic Event !
No, J, the Tornado is pretty healthy, and as far as number of Nations who sail it is concerned its by far the most popular catamaran class with the possible exception of the H16 (which doesn’t do a full return to ISAF). Its also a damn fine boat. But the problem is an awful lot more countries sail Finns… Paul Henderson put together a letter to todays Scuttlebutt which outlines a much more sensible approach than the one apparently being taken by the multihull fans.
Jim C – without the multihull community putting on the pressure there would be no cat in the 2012 Olympics – it’s that simple. It’s not for the likes of us to go lobbying IOC for an eleventh event again – that surely is for ISAF itself to do and would indeed be in the best interest of our sport – and do you think they would be doing ANYTHING without the pressure, Some of which is over passionate we all agree.
Give us some credit where it’s due. You agreed that multihulls should be in the Olympics.
PS A lot more countries sail Hobies than Finns.
There is indeed some truth in advocating the Hobie 16 for the olympics
(more affordable, more widespread,than the Tornado) and recyclable into a sailing centre or bachfront hotel after a racing career…and possibly more enjoyable to watch on tv with it’s coulourful sails and frequent capsizes…
a cheaper boat would be in line with the looming financial crisis.
It is possibly the most practised light sailing boat worldwide , not through owership and club racing, in the traditional fashion , but through sailing clubs , holiday resorts Club med and the like…
Possibly that’swhy it is wiewed more as a beach toy than a serious racing machine, and not taken seriously by the racing comunity but after all the laser was exactly that in the origin, a beach toy…and is now the mainstay of competitive sailig , producing top class sailors …even America cup ones…