SailJuice Blog

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 sailors cares about the almost 20 Olympic gold medallists in sailing, not to mention the 40 silver and bronze medallists, and variety of different boats just makes it all way too complicated for the media. But that is another story.

It is easy to comment and throw interesting and extreme suggestions when you don’t have to make the final decision… but here are my thoughts on ‘The Case’.

This decision by ISAF to take match racing for girls instead of high performance dinghy and leave Tornado out was very interesting.

No High Performance Dinghy (HPD) for girls

It is really too bad for skiff sailors, as I think a women’s HPD would have made both 29er and 49er fleets stronger. And actually it is a shame for all sailors in general.

Skiffs can compete with the interest in snowboarding and surfing and attract more kids into sailing, which is at least as important for the future of sailing as media appeal, although these two things often go hand in hand.

To get kids’ interest it is also very important how sailing is organised locally. But it is still a lot to do with the path, from youth class to an Olympic class.

Match Racing for girls

For me personally, either the HPD or match racing is fine and I am excited about either. Match racing has many good aspects and I don’t think it was a bad decision to bring women’s match racing to the Games. I would have taken both!

Good things about match racing are that you can do very high level sailing with low costs as you don’t have to own a boat. You don’t need brand new sails or the fastest possible boats either. The main thing is that the boats are equal. It comes to the skill of the sailors, not the ability to find or afford the best possible equipment. You can be part of a match racing centre and boats are provided at regattas.

The problem is that there are not yet match racing centres everywhere. But hopefully there will be. Besides, to train for match racing you only need to find two similar boats of pretty much any kind, so you don’t necessarily need a match racing centre to train or compete.

Another good thing about women’s match racing is that there is already a strong and big group of people doing it. Match racing has potential to raise the number of girls (and boys!) in sailing because of its low cost. And with good commentators and even competitors it can be even exciting to watch.

It will be interesting to see what boats will get selected for the match racing and how it really works in practice. I hope they will provide the boats at the Games which would keep the focus in match racing on boat handling, sail trimming and tactics. Keep equipment tuning out of it.

Tornado gone

I don’t have any experience of that boat. It is spectacular but also immensely expensive. So people looking at it and thinking, “Wow! How can I get to do that?” might soon think, “Never mind, I will never be able to afford that.” But cost is not only a problem in Tornado, there are many other classes that are just way too expensive, and of those classes Tornado is maybe the most spectacular one… not easy
decisions.

The Future

In the future I hope to see both a high performance dinghy and match racing in the Olympics for both men and women. Affordable, spectacular and fun! The expensive and dull classes of the Olympics should be left for Friday night billionaire club racing.”