New women's Olympic boat

the olympics are all about modern competition ... so let's get rid of athletics - that's been part of the Olympics since 776 BC, wrestling and boxiing (648 BC), equestrian events (680 BC) because we only want modern events...

The next Olympics will no doubt consist of a single race for 49ers and a beach volley tournament...

Sorry, but the Olympics is not about modern competition but about the most competitive events... Good classes are not about looking good and sailing fast...good classes are about the quality of the sailor who are attracted to and remain faithful to the class.

Which is why the Finn is still the best heavyweight singlehander and the Star the best (only?) heavy weight doublehander. Which is why the Laser will stay an Olympic class for some time and the 470 will disappear when it is dropped from the Olympics (I still believe they should have chosen the Fireball), as will the 49er because sailors will always prefer to sail Int14s...

If we are looking for a women's class for the Olympics (personally I am in favour of  open events and narrower weight bands) then we have to choose between hiking, 1 wire or 2 wire boats.

If the preference is for close tactical racing then a hiking boat may well be prefered. Which class provides cheap international (ie not limited to anglo-saxon ex colonies) racing worldwide, has the largest number of countries sailing the class has a class structure with a proven capacity to organise major events and is being built in significant numbers...

I await your answers with bated breath

Gordon

Wrestling,boxing, athletics,all agreed, they have all been around since the games began, but they have evolved. The games today are based on the games of old, but they are a very different breed of athletes in all sports at that level today. I talked about modern competition, not modern events.

Evolution in all things, physical and technical, has pushed all the sports into new realms of competitivness and I think that sailing as a sport needs to evolve now as well. As I said, nothing wrong per say with the current classes, but some of them are getting a bit stodgy, maybe we just need a bit of evolution.....

However, my post just mentioned the Star and Yngling, the rest I think need to stay in for the moment and we need to look at options for a more modern keelboat/sports boat class for men, ladies and mixed.

But this is now taking us away from the starting thread of an Olympic womens class. I vote for the 29XX 

maybe her point is that weve already said everything before anyone else got their nose in so we should have shut up and listened for a while?