Important announcement from the Tornados

Chris, I just wanted to put the point across that No matter what the development, I'm struggling to think of a single example (in dinghy sailing) whereby someone won through putting in LESS time and have less experience but had far better developed equipment.  I don't for a second think that development doesn't make a difference, because it does but as far as I know, the best sailor always wins. 

If cutting the cost to the sailors and restricting the arms race development cost is the issue, then there's a far simpler option.  Put in price caps.  E.g. Sails cannot cost more than £xxxx, The mast cannot cost more than £xxxx. 
Surely that would be more effective than restricting the class to one hull builder, sail maker and so on.  I realise this would be an extreme possibility but if more classes were to smod themselves, the potential is to end up with not much of an industy left at all. 
I realise it's not an olympic or even a true international class but the GP14 has sail price caps in place and it works.  The sailors are happy and the sailmakers are happy. 

Doug

Thanks Stuart, a good answer to my apprehensions of the move. 

I do wonder if ISAF are being somewhat unfair by saying the Tornado is too expensive when the likes of the star and Yngling are in there.  Not what you might want to hear but could it be possible that they've made their minds up for good and they're just going to throw excuse after excuse at the cat world?  A bit of a far fetched conspiracy theory but as I've just mentioned, the star and yngling class aren't exactly cheap boats. 

Doug

Welcome to their logic; Perhaps these classes days are numbered too!