SailJuice Blog

This is Part 3 of a series of articles looking at the Events and Equipment that will be contesting the Olympic Sailing Regatta in China next year. On 9th November, just a few days from now, the International Sailing Federation will vote on which 10 Events will constitute the Olympic Regatta in Weymouth 2012. An interesting task, considering that there are currently 11 Categories, so ONE MUST GO. This is your opportunity to have your say, by taking part in the SailJuiceBlog.com Olympic Classes 2012 Survey. Read on, and then if you want to add your voice to the Survey, click on the link below,

Olympic Classes Survey

The cost of Equipment is a major point of debate when it comes to discussing the relative merits of Olympic Classes. Yet in the five criteria that govern ISAF’s decisions over which Equipment to choose, nowhere does it say anything explicit about cost. The closest it gets to mentioning cost is that it “must give the best sailors in each country the opportunity to participate in readily accessible equipment”.

I remember interviewing Robert Scheidt in 2002, when he’d already won a gold and silver medal at the previous two Olympics. I asked him why he was still sailing the Laser, why he hadn’t considered moving into another class. He said he’d like to move into a Star, but didn’t have the financial means to do so.

If Brazil’s second-most decorated Olympic sailor – after Torben Grael – couldn’t afford to sail a Star, then this suggests the Star is not “readily accessible”. Of course, since then Scheidt has won a third medal in the Laser, and has made a very strong transition into the Star, this year winning both the Worlds and the Olympic Test Event. So at last he can afford that keelboat campaign.

Equipment cost is a big issue for our Survey respondents, where many of the comments in the Olympic Classes 2012 Survey have focused on cost as a major determinant of a class’s suitability for Olympic status. And yet this does not seem to be high on ISAF’s selection agenda. “Accessibility” is not the same as “affordability”.

Perhaps ISAF is right not to focus too hard on equipment cost. Talking to a coach and project manager who has been closely involved in high-level Olympic campaigning for more than 20 years, Mr X (he didn’t want to be identified, but he is one of the most knowledgeable sources of real campaign costs) says that equipment cost forms a negligible percentage of the overall cost of a campaign. For a serious campaign – by which we mean a campaign that is making a serious attempt at winning an Olympic medal, not just competing at the Games – Mr X claims that equipments costs will not even amount to 10% of the total campaign bill.

“The cost of your equipment comes way down the list,” he says. The single biggest expense you’ll face is putting a value you on your own time, according to Mr X. “This is your ‘opportunity cost’. To have the opportunity to do a full-time campaign, you’re going to need to get money from somewhere, just to keep a roof over your head and keep yourself from starving. So either you need to find a sponsor, or get funding of some kind, or you need a private income.”

These are Mr X’s top five costs, in order of magnitude, for a serious Olympic campaign:

• Opportunity cost
• Cost of a coach (eg £200/day for 200 days/year)
• Travel & accommodation
• New sails (regardless of which class you’re competing in)
• Boats & Equipment

So, the cost of the boat comes at the bottom of the list, even behind sails. That may not seem a surprise in a class where sail development is a key part of the programme, such as in a Tornado or Star, but it comes as quite a surprise for some of the simpler classes like the Laser and the RS-X.

However Mr X believes the formula applies equally to the strict, single-manufacturer one-design classes as to the more open classes. Surely, though, when comparing the two Men’s Singlehanders, a Finn campaign must cost more than a Laser campaign? After all, the Finn costs two and a half times more, while you’ve got the added expense of a sail development programme whereas in the Laser you race with what you’re given.

Nothing like as simple as that, says Mr X. Not all Lasers are born equal. Remember, the Laser started life more than 30 years ago as a cheap and simple beach boat that you could throw on top of the car. Only since has it been adopted as an Olympic racing boat. The mast rake between one Laser and the next can vary significantly, as well as the bend characteristics of the mast and the shape of the sail.

Olympic sailors care about these differences, and a serious campaigner will spend a huge amount of time and money on gear testing. Why, you might think, when he’s got to compete at the Olympic Games and Laser World Championships in supplied equipment? Because he still has to qualify to get to the Games, and so he needs the fastest equipment he can get his hands on for the ISAF Grade 1 events, or whatever events constitute his Olympic trials.

The Finn on the other hand is an expensive boat up front, costing more than £12000 compared with just under £4500 for a Laser. But a Devoti Finn is said to be so well refined and finished that it needs little work done to it from the factory, and it has a long shelf life. Ben Ainslie is said to be thinking of using his same Finn that won him gold in Athens if he succeeds in qualifying for Qingdao next year. That would mean he would be competing for his fourth Olympic medal in a five-year-old boat, a great advertisement for the class.

The 470 is a cheap boat to buy, but it has a reputation for going off the boil in less than a year, which means you need to update your boat regularly to stay on the pace. Not true, according to Olympic silver medallist Nick Rogers. “We’re thinking of using the same boat next year in China that we won the silver medal with in Athens,” he says. “The bad reputation that 470s have for falling apart in a few months might have been deserved a few years back, but it’s not true now.

“We’re going to be trying out a new boat next year but if it doesn’t win anything then we won’t be racing it in the Games. Why would you, when you’ve got the choice of a boat that’s won a medal and been top three in virtually every event it’s done since then?”

So, according to Nick Rogers, the 470 has overcome its old problems of longevity, even if it has not yet fully shaken off that reputation. Also, the cost of campaigning a Finn has come down considerably in the last 10 years since carbon mast development has settled down. When the Finn first allowed the use of carbon in the rigs and plastic sails in addition to Dacron, costs went sky high. The 1990s was an expensive time to be competing in the Finn, but now Mr X goes so far as to say that he believes it is more one-design than the Laser. He wasn’t joking either.

Like the Laser, the RS-X has a low retail price, although this too disguises a high development cost born out of inconsistencies in the equipment. The 49er, too, went through an arms race at one point as sailors illegally faired their hulls and evened up the slight asymmetries in the chines. The class clamped down on the culprits, as well as the fact that some of the leading lights in the class were performing very well with boats that had been delivered direct from the manufacturer.
The single biggest problem remaining with the 49er is that the bend characteristics vary in the flexible top-mast sections. Top teams will try a number of sections until they find one they’re happy with.

But designer Julian Bethwaite and the 49er builders are addressing both the hull and mast issues, with more accurate and symmetrical hull moulds currently in development, while the class has voted to upgrade to a one-design, single-manufacturer carbon rig with a square-topped mainsail. Not only does Bethwaite believe the carbon rig will be more consistent – thereby reducing development costs for the sailors – but early reports from the sailors who have sailed with the carbon rig say that the 49er is a much easier boat to sail. Tacking and gybing are much more straightforward manoeuvres because of reduced inertia at the top of the rig.

While few would dispute that the elevation from single-trapeze and no spinnaker to twin-trapeze and asymmetric gennaker has been an exciting move for the Tornado catamaran, it has been an incredibly expensive past few years for gear development. Perhaps in retrospect it would have been better to make all the moves in one go, back in 2000 when the Tornado Sport was first voted in. Instead, the introduction of the carbon rig in 2004 has meant a second phase of costly development over the past three years.

There seem other obvious, less expensive candidates, that could be brought in as the Olympic catamaran such as the Hobie Tiger. A cat with an 8-foot beam would be a good deal easier to transport than the Tornado with its 10-foot beam. But the sailors love their Tornado, and perhaps it is simply going through the growing pains that the Finn suffered during the 90s, and through which it has emerged into a cost-effective true one-design. There is a strong argument for giving the Tornado another Olympic cycle to get its house in order, as hopefully the carbon/asymmetric development curve should start to plateau. Also, British boatbuilder Graham Eeles is building boats now, providing some natural competition to established builder, Marstrom from Sweden.

We haven’t yet talked about the keelboats, the Yngling and the Star. Surely there is no getting away from the fact that these are expensive boats to campaign? Mr X doesn’t deny this, although he does point out that you could probably buy a Star in Europe, ship over to the east coast of the USA for a season of racing and sell it at the end of the season for almost what you paid for it new. Resale values are high. But logistically keelboats are expensive, with associated costs of a large vehicle for towing, and crane fees in some venues for hauling out of the water.

In terms of sail development, it seems there is no escaping the fact that you will have to buy a big pile of sails, whether you’re in a strict one-design or open class. The one area where you might make a saving is if you’re campaigning a Tornado, RS-X or 49er, whose fully-battened mainsails might last for a few regattas. The same is sometimes true of a Finn mainsail, whereas the Dacron classes like the Laser, 470 and keelboats can expect to use new sails every regatta.

In this article I have looked at equipment costs mainly in relation to high-level Olympic campaigns. What about those who simply want to compete, without any real hope or intention of winning a medal? Despite what Mr X says, equipment cost has to play a major role for those struggling to scrape the funds together. It can’t be coincidence that the Laser, which costs around £4500 in the UK, tops the Bums On Seats list, and the Yngling, at a shade over £30,000 ex sails, sits at the bottom of the ladder.

There is a strong correlation between equipment cost and numbers of participants.

Mr X says it would be dangerous to draw firm conclusions from this, but I disagree. The numbers suggest to me that the cost of equipment is a major determinant in the level of class participation. As to winning a medal? Mr X is far better qualified than I, when he says that campaign costs vary much less across the different classes.

That’s as far as I’m going to go in drawing firm conclusions about cost of Equipment. The more I researched this topic and the more I spoke to ‘those in the know’, the bare retail price of a boat disguises a much more complex story.

At one end of the scale, the seductive simplicity and affordability of the Laser and the RS-X certainly make these very popular Olympic classes in terms of competitor numbers, but the development cost in these one-designs is much higher than first appears, certainly if you are gunning for a medal.

At the other end of the scale, there is no getting away from the fact that the Tornado and the keelboats are expensive to campaign, but the long shelf-life of hulls and rigs must also be taken into account.

One conclusion we can draw: there is no such thing as a cheap Olympic campaign!

If you haven’t already done so, add your voice to the 800 other respondents who have already taken part in the SailJuiceBlog.com Olympic Classes 2012 Survey.

Click on this link to the Survey