Olympic 'finals' proposal

If you look at the Olympic Programme Commission Report (here: http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_953.pdf ) you'll see that among the things the IOC is concerned with are a) how much of each sport federation's revenues come from the Olympics, b) how expensive are the sports to stage and c) what sort of media return is there? The IOC, quite reasonably, doesn't want to become a sport federation's cash cow, and then have to put on a hugely expensive sport that nobody wants to watch. A significant proportion - I believe that it's actually a majority - of ISAF's funding is from the olympics, and so, to a degree, they are beholden to the IOC to establish a format which agrees with the IOC's aims.

Now, you may sat that all this proves is that sailing should get out of the olympics, and live on it's own feet. Personally, I feel that this is the wrong decision - first, there are many countries around the world where official support for sports is related to their olympic status - olympic sports get state support, non-olympic ones don't. Second, there are many sports trying to get in to the olympics because they understand the marketing potential. Getting out strikes me as cutting of your nose to spite your face.

What I personally have come to believe they should do is acknowledge that  sailing is not a great live broadcast sport. There are two ways to deal with broadcast media and sailing - a) an edited highlights programme and b) - which I believe is far more interesting - increasing exploitation of the internet, with a combination of internet broadcasting and virtual spectator type methods, using live GPS positioning.

Edited by Presuming Ed

Originally posted by Guest#260 I don't think live sailing will ever be interesting or broadcast (too long) so; the last race show down is a bit of a red herring due to the fact that coverage will be highlights anyway.[/ P] Rick

The last Olympics had full race coverage of almost all the raceing. With
the new use of interactive digital channels and the internet. I watched
virtually all the racing on the web whilst working ( full races ). Frankly I
don't have a problem with the new concept. As long as the pre finals
regatta points weighting is correctly devised so the leading boat carries a
fair avantage that has been gained into the Final. The Olympic ideal has
always been more about physical ability, and having one chance to get it
right. And this just ups the anti and means you'll get one balls out race at
the end rather than a load of rules bo**ocks like sailing somebody out the
back door to make the points stack up so you win.

So Stefan, why did many of the poorer nations try to get the Radial in to replace the Europe? Are the sailing federations and Olympic coaches of these countries (the submissions were on the ISAF site) ignorant of the real costs of Olympic sailing?

One of our Australian Olympians got (IIRC) $9000 for his Olympic campaign after winning the trials. He was in a cheap class so he could charter gear, fly to Europe and survive and get well inside the top 10 which would be a great result for most countries. Just about all his previous campaign had been very low budget local stuff I think.

So you can get top 10 for very little money, even today, in the small strict OD classes.

Exactly how far would his $9000 have gone if he had to buy a 49er or Soling and drag it around Europe, buy 3 or more sails instead of one, etc?

I don't think live sailing will ever be interesting or broadcast (too long) so; the last race show down is a bit of a red herring due to the fact that coverage will be highlights anyway.

So lets run a traditional series in a bunch of "cheap" exciting classes that creates the opportinity of good "thrills and spills" and opens the sport up to nations that don't have the same resources as GBR. The downside is we may win less medals.

Rick

Originally posted by Jamie  And I think that the Ainslie Sheidt dogfight was athe best bit of yachting I have ever seen. Why remove that possibility?

Good point. If non-sailing people mention to me sailing they have seen on TV, it is usually that footage.