What makes a good Olympic class? What do you think are the important criteria? Is it availability and affordability? Should it be high performance, or maybe low performance? After all sometimes the slower a boat, the more tactical the racing. But then faster boats can be more fun to sail, and certainly more fun to watch.
Is it media appeal? After all, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) say that minority interest sports like sailing and equestrianism need to start appealing to broader audiences to attract greater share of the global TV audience during the Olympic fortnight.
In a little more than two weeks from now, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) will sit down to determine which will be the categories for the Olympic Regatta in Weymouth, England, in the summer of 2012.
So over the next two weeks, SailJuiceBlog.com will be running a series of articles looking at the Olympic classes, and weighing up the pros and cons of the existing classes – and a few new ones besides. I’d like to hear what you think too, and in the next few days I’ll be launching an Olympic Classes Survey, where you can vote for your most wanted – and most hated – Olympic boats.
Olympic sailing is at a critical juncture. The IOC has handed ISAF the task of whittling down the existing 11 categories that will be represented at Qingdao 2008, down to just 10 for Weymouth 2012.
A game of musical chairs then.
An almighty blood bath, more likely. Have no doubt that this November in Estoril, Portugal, there will be more backstabbing going on than when Julius Caesar unwittingly strolled into the Roman Senate for the last time.
Not only that, but there are a few young pretenders waiting in the wings. At Hyeres back in April, ISAF hosted an Evaluation Trial for a number of high performance doublehanders seeking to win nomination for a new Women’s Skiff category.
After all, the men have the 49er, so why shouldn’t the women have some fun too?
Also, there is a strong Women’s Match Racing lobby winging its way to Estoril this November. They didn’t get very far last time they tried in November 2000. On that occasion the Yngling stole their thunder, but perhaps their time has come.
So, how to compare the relative merits of the Olympic classes.
Well, how’s about starting with participation? Bums On Seats (BOS).
There could be a number of ways of looking at this, but I was looking for some way of making a direct comparison between the existing classes. ISAF’s World Rankings offer a way of analysing the BOS in each of the 11 Olympic classes.
First, here is how ISAF describes the workings behind the World Rankings: “Each competitor counts his or her best seven results over the previous two years. The two year period is calculated on a rolling basis (from today’s date to the same date two years previously). Results less than 1 year old are multiplied by factor 1.5 (Year Weighting Factor) (‘YWF’).”
So, a competitor counts his or her best seven results. I’ve therefore made the assumption that the only full-time Olympic campaigners are those who have done at least seven ISAF-graded regattas in the past two years.
It’s not a perfect assumption. After all, Ben Ainslie languishes at 104th in the Finn rankings, because he’s only done two regattas in the past 24 months. By the way, if you were wondering, those two regattas are the Olympic Test Regattas in Qingdao, 2006 & 2007. Both of which Ainslie won.
In the majority of cases, however, the ‘7 regatta’ test is a pretty accurate one. So, below, in order of merit, are the 11 classes with their BOS ranking based on the number of full-time campaigners as at 3rd October 2007:
Bums On Seats Ranking
1. Men’s Singlehander (Laser), 155
2. Women’s Singlehander (Laser Radial), 79
3. Men’s Windsurfer (RS-X), 62
4. Men’s Doublehanded Dinghy (470), 61
5. Open Skiff (49er), 50
6. Men’s Heavyweight Singlehander (Finn), 46
7. Men’s Keelboat (Star), 39
8. Women’s Windsurfer (RS-X), 35
9. Women’s Doublehanded Dinghy (470), 33
10. Catamaran (Tornado), 29
11. Women’s Keelboat (Yngling), 15
And the Bums On Seats winner is….
The Laser, by a long, long way. The only class to break triple figures with a whopping 155 full-time campaigners.
A very respectable result too, with 79 for the Women’s Singlehander, the Laser Radial – especially when you think that it was only ratified as a new Olympic class just three years ago.
Of course, campaigning a singlehanded dinghy is cheaper and logistically much easier than racing a doublehander. For one thing, racing by yourself doesn’t require any social skills! Campaigning a doublehanded dinghy at Olympic level is like being in a marriage. So maybe it’s unfair to compare apples with oranges. At the top of the doublehanded pile is the Men’s 470 with 61 teams, followed by the 49er with 50. These are both very respectable scores, particularly for the 49er which is sometimes perceived as difficult to sail. Then again, was Olympic sailing ever meant to be easy?
What other trends can we spot here? Broadly speaking, it seems that you can expect just over half the number of women to campaign a particular class compared with the equivalent men’s class, ie:
· 155 v 79 in the Laser singlehanders,
· 61 v 33 in the 470 doublehanders,
· 62 v 35 in the RS-X windsurfers.
· And in the keelboats, Star v Yngling, the scores go 39 v errr… 15.
15???
Yes, just 15 full-time teams campaigning the Yngling. Not very impressive.
But hold up. Let’s give the Yngling its due. If campaigning a doublehander is logistically twice as hard as a singlehander, then what about a triplehander? This calls for serious interpersonal skills. Three people on a boat – that’s enough for a mutiny!
And let’s not forget that the Yngling is still a relatively new class. It was voted in just seven years ago. Perhaps it is still only getting established. More of that in a moment.
Let’s come to the Tornado. There’s no doubting that this is one impressive catamaran, with a high fun factor and capable of enormous speeds, but with just 29 full-time teams, not all that capable of attracting Bums On Seats, or Bums In Trapeze Harnesses.
The catamaran community loves being represented in the Olympics. Look at the uproar that US Sailing caused earlier in the year, and more recently the RYA, when they said they wouldn’t be nominating the catamaran for 2012 selection. But on the strength of these figures, can you blame the authorities? Surely participation has to play a part in determining which classes deserve Olympic status.
Come on cat sailors. If you love Tornados so much, then time to put your bums where your mouths are…. Or something like that.
Let’s look at how the other younger classes are getting on.
Even after just three years, the Laser Radial is doing very-nicely-thank-you. A BOS score of 79 compares more than favourably with the Europe, which at exactly the same point in the previous Olympic cycle (October 2003) registered a BOS score of 73.
Another brand new entrant, the RS-X Windsurfer, also compares favourably with the Mistral’s BOS scores in October 2003. The RS-X Men’s score is slightly down from the Mistral (62 v 67), but the RS-X Women’s score is slightly up on the Mistral (35 v 31). So more or less even scores there.
And as a matter of interest, how was the Yngling faring four years ago? In October 2003, there were 22 full-time teams campaigning the Women’s Keelboat. Hardly earth-shattering, but still almost 50% more popular then that it is now! The ladies have voted with their feet. It seems the Yngling’s best days are already behind it. On a positive note, though, if you campaign an Yngling full time, statistically you have a one-in-five chance of winning an Olympic medal! There’s a silver lining in every cloud.
And there you have it. If Bums On Seats is a valid way of determining the value of an Olympic Class, the Laser is a runaway success. As for the Tornado and the Yngling? Could try harder. Expense could have something to do with it, but we’ll deal with that topic another time.
What do you think? If you’ve got a view, and the courage to share it, please leave a comment in the box below.
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Andy, don’t forget the Yngling didn’t get in because of hard campaigning by the class – they were probably as suprised as anyone else. It got in because the plan for Women’s Match racing fell over at the last second because it was spotted that it wasn’t practised in enough countries world wide to qualify as an Olympic sport at all. So that left delegates scrambling to find a fleet racing keelboat, and the Yngling was the only one that had any vague semblance of true International “popularity”: all the other possibilities were basically Europe only, Americas only or ex Commonwealth only. The Yngling had a reasonable fleet in Aus, a small feet at one location in the US and a fair few in Europe…
So women’s match racing will only get in if the enthusiasts can demonstrate that its now grown enough to qualify…
IMHO the 2008 Olympics will mark a new low in Olympic sailing with no wind (thus boring races), rubbish boats (read old) and a polluted venue miles from the rest of the events.
If we want to show sailing as an exciting sport to Joe Public then I agree that (a) they should kick out the old junk (Star, Dingaling, Finn, Tornado, 470) and put in fewer but more exciting modern boats – (Bladerider, Asymetric Sportsboat, F18) (b) include match racing (it’s much easier for J public to understand since the America’s Cup) (c) hold it at a venue with some wind or invest in turbines to make it!
Like F1, minature TV cameras should be mandatory on all boats for post event TV edit – more footage makes it easier to make it exciting (it works with boring F1 races!).
They could also look at Fleet racing with Match races to decide the top 10.
Getting rid of the multihull would be a serious mistake. Look at the interest in multihulls at a larger scale! More mega boats being launched, Formula 40 relaunched as iShares, some new events for the 60 footers etc. Dropping the Tornado would be a serious mistake.
When weighing the potential Olympic classes, the BOS ranking should also take into account that a team changes, brakes up, and gets back in a differnt form. Also, a 2 person class should weigh double, (2 Bums) so the combined laser vs 470 should count 234 vs 188.
In the Yngling, there are currently 23 teams fighting for a nomination, so 69 (nice) bums. Another 12 teams have changed over the last 4 years.
But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. In formula one, there are only 22 drivers. In the America’s Cup, only 2 teams…..
Olympic sailing should be a reflection of the way we all enjoy our sport. Sailors need to be able to identify. That is the starting point for media appeal, too.
Without access to precise numbers, I think we can say that the majority of sailors have a keelboat. Dinghies second, then boards, catamarans and finally skiffs. The majority does fleet racing, only a relative few do match- or team racing.
Another thought to take into account is the notion that sailing is a very equal sport. Men and women can compete much closer then in many other sports.
This brings me to the idea brought forward by US sailing and the Chairman of the Women’s sailing commission, to have 5 male and 5 female categories.
The restriction by the IOC to have a maximum of 10 classes, makes it difficult to cater for every need. In the US submission, the boards are totally out. In the UK’s, the catamaran is lost.
So here is my suggestion:
1. Men’s One Person Dinghy (fleet)
2. Women’s One Person Dinghy (fleet)
3. Men’s Two Person Dinghy (fleet)
4. Women’s Two Person Dinghy (fleet)
5. Men’s Board (fleet)
6. Women’s Board (fleet)
7. Men’s Keelboat (fleet or match)
8. Women’s Keelboat (fleet or match)
9. MIXED Multihull (fleet)
10. MIXED High Performance Dinghy (fleet)
MIXED should not be confused with OPEN: it should be compulsory to have both genders in a team.
The exact type of boat or board is less relevant, as this varies so greatly around the globe. On keelboats, in which I compete mostly a few thoughts: The Yngling is not very modern, but affordable and equalizing in terms of speed. The Star just too old and ugly, but challenging and established. The SB3 prides itself on not being very athletic, The lighting exsists in only 7 countries….
One thing last thing to say here though: one should be carefull not to take a class in and out of the Olympics too lightly, as it will have a dramatic effect on the international, corinthian sailing community behind it. As seen by the demise of the Tempest and in some areas Soling.
So, that is some food for discussion, I would say.
The irony of the yngling vs match racing decision is that, despite not being olympic, match racing has a much larger take-up than the yngling class as can be seen from the match race rankings.
In fact, overall more people have competed in ISAF graded match race regattas than in ALL the olympic classes put together in the last 2 years.
I red your article on scuttlebutt today…and then the full story in your blog. Excellent writing as always….
I don’t know if you’ve included my “handicap” campaign in the list of 15 ynglings….but still what do I have to say about it??
Seriously I am hoping so bad that the class is dropped off of the Olympics! Sailing, Olympic or not is meant to be fun…..but as you said, starting from the point we are already three (and three GIRLS) onboard a 6,30m boat….remembering it is a heavy, slow and not fun boat – how can the class survive?….ok ok very tactic, but too old fashioned….and not media appealing at all….the boat is slow even with 20 knots of wind and can’t be sailed with over 25 knots (take as example the downwind leg in Cascais course 5 when was blowing 30 knots! – no spinnakers up….and if yes, thumb rule – WIPE OUT). Sponsors don’t want to be associated to catastrophes as well do they?
On the other hand I LOVE the cats I think they should be always included in the program….The problem with Tornados is it’s price and that for some reason it does not attracted real high skilled sailors…this is what cats are known for …. Sailable also for chaps that CANNOT sail….hahaha!
Disaster. Who is the public watching sailing that knows about tactics? Only SAILORS! If sailing wants to attract mass media (which I think will never happen) we need cool and good looking boats. Like STARS, 470, or similar (maybe skiffs?), Tornados….etc etc – (I am sorry about the comment from Pewit – referring to Yngling as Dingaling (???) *****!) Well….hold on, hold on….do we need that much of a revolution to attract the Joes??? – AC boats are NOT real fast boats and Joes do love them!
Another thing about Ynglings….why the hell do they only worry about the Northern Hemisphere/Oz/NZ when picking up new classes??? Alright SA is not the best continent to represent quantity in sailing….but is it asking to much to have Olympic classes that DO also exist down there?? Do you know how many Ynglings you find in Central + South America? = ZERO…very sad…and unfair for us…poor Latin Americans….one class less to have chances of being represented in the Olympics…Sailing is already expensive….expecting an Argentinean/Brazilian to campaign in a class basically based in Europe is pointless.
This is why the idea of Match Racing for women might sound good…BUT, does it “fit” to Olympic program/way??? It looks weird to me…but I might be wrong.
Olympic sailing needs to be visually exciting otherwise the mass punter market isn’t interested , our sport is too complicated for most of the competitors to understand, never mind viewers.
More lycra, mixed teams, colourfull boats , massively over-rigged with crash n burn potential on one two or more hulls and foils (massed produced moth type one design could be cheap (relatively ) . The olympics has through market driven factors turned itself into a ” show” , should we worry if it doesn’t reflect non olympic racing? most sailors carry on oblivious to olympic needs , but I reckon most important to keep sailing in the games
Nice article. I think the current structure is wrong as the open classes – which is the skiff and the finn are male dominated classes.
I agree with Maarteen on the 10 classes but the Cat and the Skiff have to be truly open classes.
Another note is it is a LOT easier for a developing or smaller country to take part in the classes which aren’t equipment intensive. So the Laser / Laser Radial wins and Match Racing would also work as you can practice on what ever boat is big in your country but then you only have to pay for your travel as the events provide boats.
Yngling/Star/Finn/470 and Tornados only have developed fleets in the larger countries. As the IOC is trying to develop athletes from smaller and less represented countries having boats which are only sailed in max 20% of the world is a bad idea.
Here is another thought, in the Caribbean there are 10 countries with Olympic committees and of those 10 at least 5 have sailors trying to get to the 2012 Olympics. Only Lasers are sailed regionally because they are cheap, easy and the sailors can charter them at events. None of the rest of the classes has that advantage. Match Racing would also work for these sailors but it would depend on what boats were chosen. Teams of 5/6 are harder to develop and pay for than a team of 3/4.
More countries represented = more tv = more spaces available.
A rather controversial approach to do the bums on seats bit!! The whole ethos of Olympic sailing involves superlatives – higher, stronger, faster. There is no underlying sport for all message in the rarified environment of Olympic sailing!!
The other sports have kept up with the times. Cinders are no longer in evidence on the track, Reynolds tubing not in evidence on the velodrome, not a trace of wood near the courts. There are examples that go on through the ENTIRE spectrum of all sports.
Whichever way you look at things, neither single handed boat is currently a buzz boat, the 470’s are a bit wide of the mark, and the keelboat classes are both mentioned in Exodus, Chap 4 and I cannot remember which verses. The Star was built from Noah’s original templates I believe with slight downsizing.
Whatever decisions are made the grounds of cost is a very moot point, and it becomes an irrelevence when Team GBR and other fully budgetted teams have so many more resources available than other nations. Are there plans to have a maximum number of support staff, RIBS, technology, chefs, physios, media centres and so forth which Team GBR deem essential and others cannot afford? There will never be anywhere near a level playing field. None of the classes stand out frrom the others re expense aside from maybe Finns, which have had massive development budgets from various nations over a long period of time.
It is a continuing mystery to me why our sport, with so many great technological moves forward both in mono and multihull guises continues at this level to be dominated by staggeringly fossilised opinionated relics. Even worse is that we are debating on their pitch. Their ideals are at best inappropriate and at worst harmful to participation in sailing.
Here is the naked truth. If we want to continue as an Olympic sport then we need to be appealing in a modern sense whether or not traditionalists like it. Putting top marks near breakwaters where spectators can see the sailors, finishing by these spectators (heaven forbid an upwind spectacular finish when required), and involving spectators with huge screens is a necessary evolution. ISAF had a good concept to begin this with the medal races, then have put courses for the medal races where noone can see them!
Vive la Revolution!! Vive la vitesse!! We love sailing!!
In sailing
Pete
Well said Pete and Bob! Sailing presently has the equivalent of the pinnacle of motor racing being ford fiestas all painted in the same colour… With Team GBRs medals working out at about £1M of lottery funding each the cheapness of the boat is pretty irrelevant.
That said its a bit of an oversimplification to go down the route faster=better. Watching through the medal races from the ISAF worlds the two most interesting races were probably the Yngling and Radials (though I don’t particularly like either).
Exciting sport comes down to a number of factors:
-uncertainty over the outcome
-emotional involvement of spectators (i.e. supporting your country or a competitor who is well known)
-pre-event hype by the media
-easy to tell competitors apart
-public can identify with the activity (difficult one for sailing unless we get more bums on seats at club level).
The AC did quite a good job on the above – some of the most exciting sailing I’ve watched. The slowness of the boats and light wind was not that important.
For the olympics:
-ditch 470, Yngling, Star over the next couple and bring in modern replacements
-specify supplied material with all boats gelcoated in national colours
-time limited races (worked well for the ultras and more practical for broadcasters to plan around)
-better commentating (i.e. not PJ Montgomery cliched hyperbole and not patronising explanantions of what tacking is…I don’t have a clue what the rules of rugby are but I could still enjoy watching England v France for the reasonons above).
-work with media to ‘big up’ potential medallists (e.g. Ainslie) in the same way as rowing did with Redgrave.
Whoops – essay alert…sorry.
Tim
What is this preoccupation with speed all about? F1 cars are plenty fast but there are only so many times you can see a hunk of metal tear up a straight without it starting to feel like watching paint dry.
The reason F1 survives as a spectacle is because of the bends and turns. There’s always a chance someone will spin off or clip someone else on the way around.
The lesson for sailing is simple. Stop sailing boring sausage courses and bung in a load more marks. Preferably, stop sailing on the sea where the wind is predictable and start sailing on some inland puddle where the winds shift all over the place and are never stable in strength. Result: pile-ups at every mark with lots of shouting and swearing.
By all means have speed but do it in boats like the 18ft skiffs – highly unstable where the slightest mistake results in a spectacular binning, especially when the conditions are difficult. Even then, its boat on boat action that maintains excitement in sailing viewing, not straight line speed.
Oh! And don’t forget to add a couple of commentators who actually get into it and are enthusiastic about what they are watching, not some arse like Green who speaks in a flat monotone and insists on coming up with banalities like “There’s a flag on the play!” like its some kind of obscure North American team game.
If it’s ease of viewing for the public, then surely team racing has a pretty strong case? Unlike fleet racing it’s pretty easy to tell who is leading and it’s possible to have a knockout stage. It’s close contact, and quite exciting with only a little knowledge. No probs with buying expensive boats too which is better for poorer countries and making campaigns cheaper.
Also, shorter races lend themselves to better television coverage. I know it’s still a minority sport, but with a bit of effort from the rya, and olympic status it would not doubt take off.
The only arguments that I can see against are that it would need 6 people per team (which might deplete other classes), and it’s currently not as widely practiced as fleet racing.
“What is this preoccupation with speed all about?”
I have to explain that for most people speed is a “preoccupation” that leads to an adrenaline rush. This is a pleasure for most of us, and means that the spectators’ enjoyment is not dependent upon knowledge of sailing rules and racing.
Speed enhances every facet of any sport. Team pitch sports are played on the run – it is that basic. To ask why we should probably focus on fast boats to enhance our sport’s appeal is to attempt to fly in the face of evolution.
I hope this has not sounded patronising John, but the Olympics are for everyone – not just enthusiasts and afficionados.
Pete, no patronizing perceived however I think you’ve missed my point. Speed is adrenalizing when you experience it, not when you watch it. I think as a viewing spectacle boat on boat action is much more entertaining and I had first hand experience of this watching the AC with relatives who are not sailors. On the long beats they would go back to reading their papers/books etc but the crossing and mark rounding really held their attention. A good commentator can make the technicalities appealing.
As I said originally, I’m not against speed, I just don’t think that by itself it necessarily provides the best viewing spectacle.
I’ll just add two cents worth on one fleet: 470s. How about making it coed? The US women actually won the combined trials last week. It happened after the top male team didn’t sail the final race, but the results show that racing was close among the top teams of both sexes. It’s clearly a boat that can be sailed at the higest level by both men and women. A coed 470 olympic class could be set up as mandatory coed (1 m, 1f), or simply open to either/or.
“neither single handed boat is currently a buzz boat”
Depends how you define “buzz”. If the buzz is about getting record fleets, being the fastest growing class in the world, incredible competition for a huge variety of people, the Laser and Radial have lots of buzz.
Marina, if you don’t think the cats attract highly skilled sailors then why do some people (Chris Dickson, Bruce Kendall) fail to perform as well in cats as they did in their earlier classes? The top cat sailors may not be hot in other craft, but their ability to extract the top speed out of their boats is amazing and takes something special….I wish i knew what it was!
“Speed enhances every facet of any sport.”
I’m sorry, that’s disproven by the popular sports.
Powerboat racing is fast, and much less popular than sailing. Car racing, despite the massive industry backing, seems to generally be no more popular than sailing in terms of participation. The 100m sprint and marathon are much more popular that speed skating or racing on rollerblades, and much slower. Mogul skiing is more popular than speed skiing and bushwalking is more popular than either. Moths, MPSs and Canoes are less popular than Lasers and Solos.
If you go to Sydney, you can get a free skiff – but sometimes they have trouble giving them away….what does that say about the appeal of speed?
“Team pitch sports are played on the run – it is that basic.”
Jai Alai is the fastest ball sport of all (188mph balls) and it’s pretty much tiny. If speed was what counted, football would be a tiny sport and we’d all watch jai alai.
Isn’t rugby sevens faster-moving than the normal game, but much less popular? If the speed of the movement was the important thing, bicycle polo and “normal” polo would be much more popular than football. There’s so many more exmples that prove that pure speed is NOT what counts.
The fastest a Tornado would do in the Olympics would probably be 20 knots. For a $60k bit of kit that’s pathetic in pure speed terms. If pure speed is what counts, sailing is sunk no matter what.
Ha, nice article, nice comparision. Only read it today and at first reading I tought (being a German and having little language problems) that BOS means: classes where you are sitting in, are boring. Now that is partway true. New classes like the 49er is not a “bum on the seat” class… LEt´s think: Do often seat on the Tornado? Does a Foiler Moth pilot is really sitting in? Yes, we want athletes sport but than I must vote against my “age group” in the Star class. Keep the arguments coming…
Compulsory MIXED teams might be currently unworkable, at least on an Olympic level, but a goal worth keeping in mind when selecting a boat later……
In the smaller cats (F18) mixed teams are already growing in number, and a skiff like the 29erXX or RS800 could cater for lighter (mixed or open) teams.
Another note when reading the comments so far: media attention is NOT for Joe Public. Who is watching Formula 1? Drivers. Football? Boys who (used to) play it. America’s cup? Sailors. And there are millions of sailors around the world. A big enough audience to be commercially attractive.
They can relate to keel boats, lasers, cats. They look and wonder at skiffs and foil flyers the way the car enthousiast looks at monocoque cars… A little extreme, fascinating but is it Olympic?
It’s also that, even for sailors, sailing is not very attractive to watch. Too far away. Lousy accomodation (bar for the AC’s Veles e Vents pavilion) and TV commentators that can’t tell a tacking duell from a shifty wind.
We should first of all be looking into changing that. Organize a pre-race lunch, close to shore racing, pontoons with catering near the buoys and finish, after race dinner for the audience…. The medal race is a first step, virtual specatator, sail TV are helping too.
In short: boats that the audience (sailors, remember) can identify with, races they can see and surroundings to enjoy it in.
So we can say: “We love to watch it, too!”
Ok so its a bit simple but simple is much better suited for TV.
Replace the 470s with two boat team racing either in Fireflies or 420 without trapezes. Specify two males and two females per team. Much more exciting to watch can be right next to the harbour and at 8-12 mins per race much easier for the TV.
Laser Radial Womens single hander
Laser Standard Mens single hander
RS 800 Womens skiff
49er Mens Skiff
Laser SB3 open keelboat. Much more exciting than Ynglings or Stars and the girls can easily compete.
F18s again open for the Cat if you have to have a Cat.
Foiling 600 open to men and women unless they make a foiling RS 800 its the coolest boat around
Allowing men and women to compete against each other has to be more representative of our sport and much more viewer freindly.
Don’t do the windsurfing, it really doesn’t represent the real sport unless there’s loads of wind.
Team Racing…..The races are short, thus making it attractive to the networks. It’s exciting, 3 on 3 with one goal, getting a team boat across the finish line first.
Andy,
Nice piece, I’d almost forgotten that it was time for this decision. I wrote a three-part web story about this impending change a few years ago. People may find some of the information relevant. Here’s the link: http://www.sailingworld.com/racing-views/jobson-report/reshaping-the-olympics-part-iii-40695.html
I said it then, and I’ll say it again: Unless ISAF starts from scratch, and makes each class earn its spot, this is going to go poorly. The Olympic fleet is due for a major reshaping and just doing the minimum (i.e. cutting out one event and keeping the other 10) will hurt the sport.
I wish I had the confidence to say they’ll act accordingly.
That’s a pretty cool approach Stuart!! Very interesting and I think will require more balls than are currently round the table to adopt your ideas. However, love the concept!!
I am following the discussion of the choice of 2012 Events and I have a general feeling when reading all the posts: people seems that are playing ad Risiko, where you can move thousands of soldiers from one countries to another bu simply moving some small statues …. the reality is something completely different.
First of all, Olympics shall reflect, in my understanding, the reality in respect of the sailing world and shall not be an exercise of people who try to “paint” something they like to see; secondly, next November ISAF will decide the events not the boats/equipments and this, I believe, makes a lot of difference (the analysis of BOS becoming not pertinent to the discussion and all the comments on the type of boats to be selected or not).
Considering the two mentioned principle, one should ask him/helself: which are the events most sailed in the world ? the answer is with no doubt: one person dignhy (men and women) and two person dinghy (men and women), keelboat. So the choice of the 2012 events shall reflect, first, this reality … then one can leave his/her imagination in chosing the remaining events.
Mixed team is something that does not happen in any other sport (at least at the Olympic level), so why should the sailing be doing this ? In addition, does mixed team reflect the reality of sailing at such level of competition ? no, so why sailors should be forced to sail that way ?
In addition to the above, I believe that the countries participation in each of the events (not yet classes) shall have a weight in the decision: sailing dropped by around 10 nations at the Olympic in the last ten years and it is not IOC policy to allow sport in the Olympic if they have few countries competing in it. One likes it or not, this is a major point and when deciding ISAF shall keep it in mind: chosing some events only because they are nice it does not necessary mean that they make the good for our beloved sport.
Last but not least, ISAF is composed by National Sailing Federation, which spend their money to buy boats, sails, to make their sailors travelling around the world: do you think that they are so interested if there will be a huge change in the olympic boats as some of the posts suggested ?
Of course there should be a lot more to write and certainly this is a very important and difficult issue.
Congratulation for the blog.
Jack Dinelli
True, a bit early to be talking boats, not categories… but it’s fun and closer to our hearts….
OPEN keelboat… great idea. But NOT the SB3 They pride themselves on NOT being atheletic…. http://www.lasersailing.com/disp/uk/sb3/racing.
Maybe the Streamline with a good weight limit (205 kilos) to allow true Open teams. Yes, Open teams DOES reflect what is going on at the regattas all around the world.
Or just stick to the Yngling one more time as there has been invested so much by so many. We can’t close our eyes to that or sailing will really become a sport for the rich.
Mixed Olympic sport? It took me all of two seconds to remember Gail Emms and Nathan Robinson winning Olympic medals playing badmington together so yes there are other sports with mixed teams. Also remember Kathy Foster and Pete Newlands winning that 470 race together and Paul and Trine Elvstrom (hope I spelt that right) sailing a Tornado together.
Have a look around the non Olympic sport dinghy sailing, top flight dinghy racing, team racing, keel boat and offshore and you’ll find lots of mixed teams.
I for one think that allowing mixed teams would make sailing more interesting both to sailors and the general public.
the olympic should show how good you are, how much hours you put in the water, a show of your effort, not the size of your wallet. With the current boats, you can be the best sailor in the world, if you dont spend lots of money who have zero chance of being competitive in almost all the current olympic classes. you are left with the laser and the rs-x and that it, if you want be not the best but just top 20 in a world event, you have to put a lot of money.
the classes should be changed, the boats should reward talend and not money, use one design boats, if you see the world championship of hobie 18 or even a simple dart 18 you see really good racing! sb3 you see men, women, old new they all sail every one have fun, maybe we dont even need 10 events, maybe we should think not on the number of events, but what is really important, what brings people to sail every day, maybe we would live with 8 events, but where any one, across the globe, when it goes sailing in a sunday can have a olympic dream!
I think That when our own governing body ISAF can not see What is best for Sailing, there is no hope.
Sailing needs a big Shake Up or there will be no future for Sailing in the olympics.
Bring Back Cat sailing or Topless Beach Volley Ball !
2 girls and 1 cup