SailJuice Blog

Now, further to the Danish protest over the Women’s Events, here’s the Danes’ submission to ISAF regarding the Men’s Events for the Olympic Regatta 2012…

If you want to download the original submissions in pdf format, here they are:

denmark-men-submission-sailjuice.pdf

denmark-women-submission-sailjuice.pdf

Submission from Danish Sailing Association

Men/Open Events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition

Proposal:

That the decision on the selection of Men / Open Events for the 2012 Olympic
Regatta be re-considered in accordance with 16.1.1(b), and that a run-off vote be
held between “Keelboat” and “Multi-hull” at the earliest available opportunity.

Current Position:

Council decided in November, after a last minute change of the voting procedure, the following
6 events for Men:

• Windsurfer
• 1 person dinghy
• 1 person dinghy (heavy)
• 2 person dinghy
• 2 person dinghy (high performance)
• Keelboat

Reasons:

In November 2007 the voting procedure was changed in the last minute to a “vote for 6 out of
7” process, with the result that it became a “tactical vote”, rather than a vote where Council
members had the possibility to choose the last Men’s event, which they believed would benefit
Olympic Sailing most with regard to especially excitement, innovation, public and media
appeal.

This submission will provide for a run-off vote that will allow Council members to make a
specific choice between those two Events.

This choice was not part of the November 2007 “vote for 6 out of 7” process, when the votes
cast for “Keelboat” and “Multi-hull” was extremely close (23 and 21), and the “Multi-hull”
Event was excluded despite receiving more than 50% of votes cast.

Sailing needs to strengthen its ability to interest and involve the public and be presented in a
way that is appealing to the media, especially the Television Media.

Sailing was in both Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 one of the Olympic Sports with the lowest
number of recorded TV-hours (26 out of 28). See attachment.

To our knowledge the Sailing Events with most TV-hours in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004,
were the “2 person dinghy (high performance)” and “windsurfer” events, i.e. Events with
speed, action and exiting pictures.

Multi-hull sailing is also a high performance event which is modern, thrilling, athletic and
demanding, and provides good TV footage. Multi-hull sailing has already proven this in the
“Volvo Championship Series” in Germany together with the 49er, attracting more than 25.000
spectators in each of the three events.

In 2005 an IOC report stated that ISAF had taken steps to present its sport in a more
interesting and attractive manner: “….. Equipment Innovation introducing on board cameras
and sound and GPS responders displaying boat positions.”

In 2007 ISAF made two decisions that would appear to move the sport in the Olympics in a
completely different direction.

Therefore it would benefit sailing in general that Council has a run-off vote for the last Men’s
event, where Council should take into consideration the quite critical situation for the sport
with insufficient TV exposure at the Olympic Sailing Competition as well as in general.

Sailing should use its 10 events to increase diversity of sailing skills, and therefore types of
sailors, represented at the Olympics. We should use our 10 events to maximise the number of
young sailors, who have an Olympic dream, and broaden the number of countries these sailors
come from.

Our most successful Olympians will be able to be successful in one event and then repeat this
success in another event. However we should not set out to provide an “Olympic Career” for a
small number of elite sailors, where these sailors typically move from one Event to another as
they grow older. To have such a set of events will risk IOC reducing further the number of
Events for sailing. Our Events should test as wide and diverse a range of sailing skills as
possible.

Please note that if there is a run-off vote, and if Multi-hull is selected, Council would then need
to vote on whether Multi-hull should be Men or Open.

2008-03-11
DANISH SAILING ASSOCIATION
Dan Ibsen, secretary General