SailJuice Blog

Good news today with ISAF’s announcement of an Olympic Commission. This will new group will be tasked with developing and promoting long-term strategy for the sport of sailing at the Olympic Games, something that has been sadly lacking in recent years.

The ISAF Council approved the creation of a new Olympic Commission at the ISAF Annual Conference held in Madrid, Spain last November. The new Commission replaces the Olympic Advisory Board and will be tasked with assisting the Executive in ‘developing, agreeing and promoting a comprehensive vision and strategy of the sport of sailing in the Olympic Games’.

Phil Jones (AUS), Technical Delegate for sailing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and CEO of Yachting Australia since 1997, has been appointed as chairman of the Commission. Jones was critical of the lack of vision or strategy guiding Olympic sailing, so… Read the rest

According to readers of US website Scuttlebutt whose Olympic Events 2012 poll concluded recently, the keelboats shouldn’t make the cut for Weymouth. Below are the results.

Ironically, this result comes in a week when 104 Stars are competing at their World Championships in Miami. That is a phenomenal turn-out and speaks volumes for the health of the class, although of course Miami is the spiritual home of the Star fleet. Turnouts here are always going to be good.

The strength in depth of the competition is impressive too. Former Finn Olympic Champion Mateusz Kusnierewicz and his Polish team mate Dominik Zycki (shown below in Fried Elliott’s photo) turned in an outstanding performance to win the first two heats, only to drop to 8th overall after scoring 44th in the third heat. There are some very good sailors finding themselves… Read the rest

Good news, but also a lot of bad news, for sailors who want to see a re-vote of the slate of 10 sailing Events being lined up for the Olympic Regatta in Weymouth 2012.

If you’ve been following this blog since last October, you’ll be familiar with the whole Estoril saga, where the Men’s Keelboat won a narrow victory over the Multihull, and the Women’s Match Racing just edged out the Women’s Skiff. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, dig back through the SailJuice archives for October and November 2007.)

SailJuice was not a fan of either of these outcomes, and reported on the eleventh-hour change in voting procedure, a cunning move that was led by Charley Cook from US Sailing, whose agenda was to see the keelboats remain in the Games. (Fair play to… Read the rest

A letter from outgoing ISAF president Arve Sundheim to members of ISAF Council suggests there is unlikely to be a reconsideration of the Olympic events vote taken in Estoril back in early November.

Click here to download a pdf of the letter: isaf-sundheimresponse11dec07.pdf

Sundheim defends the voting procedure and claims that ISAF paid due consideration to the IOC’s requirements.

But pressure is building from national authorities to get a revote next May at the ISAF mid-year meeting in Qingdao. Following Yachting Australia’s and the Royal Yachting Association’s open requests for a revote, Yachting New Zealand is now also looking to do the same, according to a report on Sail World.

The YNZ statement says: “The Board of Yachting New Zealand has resolved to make a submission to the ISAF mid-year meeting requesting that the Events slate for… Read the rest

The RYA has stuck its head above the parapet, and fired off a letter of protest to Goran Petersson, President of ISAF.

Battle has commenced.

It’s now a matter of how many other National Authorities the RYA can take with it. Presumably Rod Carr and his troops have not done this without a good deal of consultation behind the scenes.

We can expect Yachting Australia to throw its full support behind this letter, and then it’s a matter of watching how many more will follow. Remember the Just Five to Get a Revote article in SailJuice a few days ago. That’s all that’s needed – in theory – but the RYA will be hoping and expecting that good deal more than five follow them over the top and into battle.

Here’s the letter… Read the rest

I’ve been trying to find out US Sailing’s reasons for directing their three representatives on ISAF Council to vote the way they did. Sail Magazine editor in the US, Kimball Livingston, beat me to it. Here’s an excerpt of what Kimball managed to elicit from US Sailing’s top brass, Jim Capron and Dean Brenner, respectively the president and chairman of the organisation.

“The Events Committee put up a slate, but the Council typically does not vote the slate,” Capron says. “That was true in 2007, and once that happens each event is back on the table. Our proposal for 5-5 gender equity was voted down, and soon it was apparent that five of seven events were a shoe-in, no matter how US Sailing voted.

“The windsurfer was in, because the rest of the world wants it. That left keelboats and… Read the rest

Much of the criticism for the way the ISAF vote went has fallen on the shoulders of the US and RYA members of ISAF Council. For those who haven’t caught up yet, the RYA had control over just one vote, that of Chris Atkins, who in the two contentious votes opted for Multihull rather than Keelboat for the Men, and High Performance Dinghy rather than Match Racing for the Women.

As for US Sailing, if you read through recent comments to SailJuice (including from multiple Olympic medallist in the Star, Mark Reynolds) then you will see some statistics which point to just how much more popular the Star is in the USA, compared with the Tornado. So people can have little complaint with the individual members on Council. My problem, as I said yesterday, is with the constitution of ISAF… Read the rest

An interesting document arrived in my inbox this evening. I’ve included an excerpt below. It’s from the Olympic Programme Commission Review of the Olympic Programme and the Recommendations on the Programme of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing 2008.

Catchy title, isn’t it! It was published in August 2002.

Here’s the bit that might interest you….

3.1.4 Recommendations on the events/athlete quotas of sports currently in the Olympic Programme

While noting that a full review of the event programme and athlete quotas for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad would be conducted following the decisions on sports and disciplines, the Commission developed certain recommendations on the events or athletes quotas in the following sports on the programme of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad:

Sailing (ISAF) – Reduction in athlete quota and number of events… Read the rest

Carol Cronin is one of the best female keelboat sailors in the USA. A regular podium finisher at international Yngling regattas and match race events, she was US Olympic representative in the Yngling for Athens 2004. Here she offers her view on last week’s decision by ISAF to introduce Women’s Match Racing to the Olympic roster.

As usual with ISAF meetings, it wasn’t over until the Council finally sang. And recent history tells us it’s still not really over, not until next year when the equipment is chosen.

Remember 1999? Only two Olympic quads ago, Council selected keelboat match racing as the new women’s medal for 2004. One year later, they backpedaled to women’s keelboat fleet racing and selected the Yngling as the newest member of the Olympic family. Yes that was then, and this is 2007/8. But has anything… Read the rest

Last week we profiled Silja Lehtinen, a top Finnish sailor who races at the highest levels of skiff sailing, match racing and Yngling fleet racing. Now the decision has been made, we asked Lehtinen to give her assessment of the future for Olympic sailing.

“I liked Gary Jobson’s idea of a singlehanded dinghy, high performance dinghy and team racing for both men and women. With a few media attractive classes and smaller number of participating people, sailing would become more interesting for the public.

The best of the best would be even closer than now and it would be easier for outsiders to get to know the boats and people. Olympic classes have to be either affordable or media attractive so that more people can afford an Olympic campaign or find sponsors.

Now, no one else than other… Read the rest