Olympic 'finals' proposal

But Fizz, look at the sailing disciplines that have followed the high performance/high speed/high publicity route.

18' skiffs......pro circuit crashed and burned. Tiny class.

Pro windsurfing....pro circuit not at all healthy, shrinking badly. When windsurfing went high speed it became much less popular.

60' tris....pro circuit always shakey.

Ultras....dead.

How many times does this tired old idea have to dragged out of its grave before it's accepted that it's none too healthy?????

Surveys commisioned here in Australia show that people did NOT keep out of sailing because they thought it was boring, they kept out of the sport because  they thought it was expensive, elitist and difficult. Surely highlighting the expensive elitist and difficult classes will only make that more of a problem?

Be that as it may, some of the 49er coverage had a number of my non-sailing mates looking on in awe. Close tactical racing is great to watch, but the Olympic are the biggest shop window our sport could dream of. Surely we should be encouraging people into the sport by advertising it for what it is:

Exciting and wet.

Secondly, should our Olympic guys not be sailing the most physically and mentally demanding boats available?

This is a collection of really crap ideas.

To pick on two;

[a weighting re-calculation given to the points achieved to give a

preferred weighting to the boat place 1 overall after race 10, and so on through to

boat 10]

This sounds as if the points leaders advantage will largely evaporate but for what purpose? If the weighting proposed is used, then surely the winner will still not be immediately obvious and someone (the ill informed commentator) will have to inform the watching masses who has actually won. 

[The final scoring system to be determined by the President in consultation with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) before the end of 2005].

So no consultation with sailors or even National Authorities but undue influence by broadcasters and the president who obviously already like the idea of a single race (potential) lottery to decide the medals.

In any case, Sailing is far from the only sport to have no obvious (to Joe public) result until the computer has worked it out.

Take the decathlon for instance - we watch the exhausted competitors amble around the final 1500m 'race' and never is the winner of that race the actual Gold medallist - we have to endure the prattling of the commentator pretending its a close finish while the computer works out who won. But we still love it (especially if a Brit is involved).

Almost any of the judged events are not won until the judge’s scores come up and are computed - and in the multi discipline events like Gymnastics, competitors are sometimes not even on the same apparatus at the same time. 

Yet in all these cases the points advantage built up by the leader is still intact going into the last shot, dive, run, apparatus or whatever - So why should sailing be treated any different?

The fact is sailing is complex to understand and very difficult to televise - messing with it like this doesn't really address those fundamental problems. i.e. joe public still will not comprehend "why boats don't go straight to the mark" or gybing into pressure, covering upwind or shifts at all - so unless we reduce the Final to a simple (reaching) drag race from A to B we can't ever expect the masses to 'get it'.

 

I do agree that the last race be non-discardable – that would certainly add interest and demand that the leader still sail well in that race.

Take your (1st) point Stefan - but you do get points credit for all the other races prior to the final, so it's not really a lottery - it just weights the final race by a yet to be specified amount.

Conversely, the first person over the line still isn't the winner - so it will continue to confuse the hell out of most TV watchers.  Ie Ben Ainsley won by coming last?    woss that about then?

Maybe traditional racing should be dumped in favour of parallel upwind down-wind slaloms.  Preferably in super-fast, hard to control boats ensuring lots of telivisable wipe outs.  More my kind of sailing. .  I jest .... or do I?

To your 2nd - I think both are important.  Everyone pays for the olympics, so probably have a right to enjoy watching it - and the more that watch the better the funding; plus there's also the worlds for finding the best sailors. 

Edited by NickA

The problem with a single-race final is that we all know that luck plays a significant part in an individual race. That's one of the good things about sailing; you might not be winning regularly but once in a while, the start comes right, the shifts all arrive at the right moment and you win.

In a series it all balances out and the cream rises to the top, but in an individual race, even I can win sometimes.

So that says, under this proposal, after four years (minimum) of training and preparation, you finish with a glorified lottery. I am staggered that the ISAF can propose this.