What is the pinnacle of our sport?

I met him a couple of times and he stuck me as a confident sort of chap..... not the kind to feel embarrassed by being talked about, or considered Elvis' league...... the king lives!!!!

so we cannot agree.  The reason being that we have differnt sports / skills

Olympics is small fleet racing, so a premium on boat speed.

Large fleet worlds - also boat speed, but starting becomes veryu important and the ability to get your self out of a problem

Short off shore type races, spee, tactics loacl knowledge

Longer off shore (fastnet, Hobart etc).  Speed, skills in boat prep, Nav etc

Longer races VOR - speed, boat prep, Nav, routing, weather etc

Long single handed / Non stop races - speed, boat prep and the ability to fix on the move etc, Nav, Weather, routing, sleep stress etc.

The point is that nobody pretends that all the different types of competetive activity involving our four legged friend are the same sport. We refer to equestrian sports (using the plural). I believe that we should talk about sailing sportS, a family of related sports using wind-powered floating objects (to include the windsurfers).

In which case there cannot be one pinnacle but several. Few manage to attain the summits in several disciplines - i would suggest that someone like Paul Cayard is one of them.

I would also point out that we have been talking almost exclusively of helmsmen/women. People who twiddle bits of wood, or steel, at the more comforable end of the boat are in a minority in our sport.

Gordon