Drop the discards?

It's an interesting question. Assuming you are not talking about club series which span several weeks and non-attendance is therefore inevitable, I think the use of discards is somewhat a legacy of ye olde days. There are many other sports where a bit of bad luck can spoil your result - Formula 1, Premier League, Test Match cricket – but you can't discard your worst race, match or innings. In any case if the series is long enough your luck should average out, and serious gear failure is unusual these days (and most likely due to poor care than bad luck). So in that sense I see no need for a discard at all in a weekend open or week long championship. On the other hand, having no discards encourages a conservative strategy, whereas a high percentage of discards encourages risk taking – hit the corner and you may win or lose, but you can discard the loss and bank the win.

So I would suggest that at the Olympics the different classes should have a different discard policy as that way they actually become different events (with different strategic approaches to racing) rather than the same event conducted in different classes.

However I prefer the format suggested by Andy Rice in this month's Y&Y mag, where the medal event is the first to two race wins, with the winner of the qualifying series counting one race win at the start. That way the gold medallist is always the person to win the last race, which again encourages positive sailing and makes intuitive sense to the audience.

That seems to be the idea coming from 49er and Nacra class manager Ben Remocker.