Nice new Laser for Christmas

Originally posted by iGRF

Originally posted by iGRF

So, getting back to the bit where I told you all long ago, there is no such thing as 'fair' One Design racing and the top guys that win, usually have some form of 'cheat' going on. It's been that way ever since the Windsurfer Class in my world, and we knew back then the Laser world was the same.

I can't believe it has been so publicly admitted for profit, but there you go, you can tell me now.

iGRF was right all along.  

There are some cheats, but the idea that winners at national level are usually cheats is completely bollox in my experience. And since in some top SMODs the winners don't even get to use their own gear at the major world events, there's no room to cheat.

In one major SMOD, for example, each team swaps boats between every heat, or every couple of heats. This is done on the beach, in the full view of every other competitor. There is simply no way of modifying or replacing the gear that wouldn't involve some very tricky conjuring tricks under the eyes of the rest of the fleet.

At the Laser worlds you used to be allocated a boat that you shared with another competitor, sailing in the other group. You'd have to modify or replace gear that someone else was keeping an eagle eye on, and do it in the same dinghy park that your fellow competitors are using.

After some 45 years of SMOD world titles, there's have been plenty of chances to this sort of cheating to be exposed (because of course all your competitors have motivation and opportunity to expose such cheating) and I think I may have heard or one or two instances, sometime back in the '70s or something.

So if this is going on, either just about no one has ever made the tiniest error in the difficult business of cheating, or they have made such an error but no one in the fleet has noticed and bothered to protest. The idea therefore fails the common sense test.