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 now he has been given the best role possible to take Olympic sailing forward with a much greater sense of vision and purpose – provided that the new Commission is given proper powers to do so.

The Commission also includes representatives from both the Events Committee, who are tasked with making recommendations to the ISAF Council on Olympic issues, and the Athletes’ Commission, which is both formed of and elected by sailors campaigning for the Olympic Games.

Göran Petersson (SWE), President of ISAF, said: “Sailing has a very proud Olympic history having featured on the Olympic programme for over 100 hundreds years. We should respect this tradition, but we must also continue to innovate and take the long-term view. ISAF has made major progress in developing the sport of sailing at the Olympic Games, with the successful introduction of the Medal Race format at Beijing 2008 the most recent example. I am greatly looking forward to the input from the new Olympic Commission to help guide our future decision-making and ensure the continued success and growth of sailing as an Olympic sport.”

The full list of Commission members, confirmed during the February meeting of the ISAF Executive Committee in Los Angeles, is:

Phil Jones (AUS) – Chairman
The Chairman of the Athletes’ Commission – currently Marcelien De Koning (NED), although note Athletes’ Commission elections for the next four-year term are scheduled to take place this year
The Chairman of the Events Committee – currently Chris Atkins (GBR)
Cory Sertl (USA)
Georg Fundak (AUT)
Scott Perry (URU)

The Olympic Commission will meet for the first time during the ISAF Mid-Year Meetings, held in Warsaw, Poland this May.