Who's for the chop or ...

Originally posted by gordon Sailing has a problem especially as average size of sportsmen and women is on the increase. The sport has little or no place for the large athlete. The Finn, supposedly a heavyweight boat can be sailed by a typical modern three-quarter. Worldwide there is a tendancy to envisage elite sports men as somewhat emaciated and under-sized. I blame the unhealthy obsession with association football - a lot of skinny little runts running around kicking the ball, falling over whenever an opponent winks at them and, when they score a goal, engaging in dubious quasi-sexual activicty! Bunch of onanists! They should use their hands for  playing the ball..

I wouldn't call a 100kg bloke (Finn sized) a typical 3/4!

What and football is more homo-erotically charged than rugby! bunch of big guys wearing short shorts wrestling around in the mud ogeth, and occasional grouping together and linking arms!?

( 100kg on the wing? ? A certain Jonah Lomu gave the pomms' a plopp in the pimms a few years back now!)

 

Get rid of the dinosaurs and lead bellies. Ladies ? Give em18 ft skiffs on the small rig! Let them steal some lime light.

It would be great to keep a boat for the larger boned of us, but what? Mega byte?

 

sailing should be as modern, excting and accessible as it can be! 

 

ok 18's are a price but solings aren't exactly cheap.

giving the girls something sexier than the 49er with bigger spills would be fun

I mean I'm not talking beach volleyball, but the women should get something exciting to catch the limelight

Originally posted by Wes Originally posted by CT249 If you lose the board, you'll lose the cheapest and most accessible class.   Possibly, but how many people do you know that have an RS-X compared to say a laser? I've got 4 windsurf boards, but a course racing board is not one of them. Mind you I never wanted an IMCO either.... Dinghies are pretty cheap really, although an Olympic campaign is obviously not. At the highest level it's not cheap for the windsurfers either. I was chatting to Nick Dempsy at Weymouth a while back (bronze at the last Olympics) and he's going through 2-3 boards a month at £1800 ish a pop.....

You're dead right about RSX v Laser, of course, but maybe there's as many RSXs as Stars, Finns or Tornadoes. Personally, as a long-time boardhead I think the way the windsurfing industry tried to kill longboards is a major part of why it's less than 8% as big as it used to be.

Nick's costs may be a classic case of expenses rising to match the available funding, perhaps. The Aussies, having less funding (which is why Natasha Sturges moved from her hometown south of Sydney to the UK) can't afford to change gear and still do OK (4th, 5th, 6th,7th in the last two Games, I think). Certainly the feeling here from the ex-IMCO world champ is that the boards are certainly the cheapest way to go.

A couple of years ago I was racing against many of the top IMCO racers, from many different nations; they didn't seem to be all that gear-conscious, no more worried about ageing gear that Laser sailors. I actually worried less about my IMCO's speed than about my Laser's speed, because in IMCO it seems that unless you're full time, you have zero chance of being competitive. In the Laser, you can sometimes be fully competitive.

It won't happen, the Star beng great at lobbying, but I'd be tempted to junk both keelboats in favour of a high performance woman's two hander in addition to the 470. In theory it reduces the female participation but in practice the class quotas could be upped a bit, and more countries would probably enter a female performance two hander than the keelboat classes. There would be an argument for losing the Finn in favour of a women's catamaran if (and I don't think it can) it could be demontrated that there is a reasonable amount of woman's catamaran sailing internationally.

On board costs, I bet the travel costs for a board campaign are a shed load cheaper than for a dinghy one, and I bet that makes a big difference...

On the Yngling choice, there were fleets (not big fleets, but fleets, in North America, Europe and Australasia at least, which wasn't true of any other alternative.

Originally posted by gordon Don't see many kisses and cuddles in a scrum...

There's more than one way to craftily wind up your opponent provided the ref doesn't see you, and one that can't leave a mark might have its advantages... [allegedly]. You can imagine it can't you... Player sent off for throwing a punch: Press, "why did you do that", Player, shamefacedly, well he stuck his tongue in my ear in the ruck and asked me if I was free for a bit of cottaging after the match...