Events for 2012...

I find all this very odd. On the whole most.but not all, female sailors seem to crew with men helming. So why no mixed teams? Also not including female skiff sailing seems strange, what are all those "hot" girl 29er teams supposed to do now? Go into 470's I suppose. I am sure there is nothing wrong with the 470 but modern it is not. No one asks runners to don 30 year old plimpsoles for their races or pole vaulters to use scafold poles. No cats !, well what can I say. They seem to have gone out of thier way to offend everyone.

Petition to the IOC

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/multihullinolympics/index .html

 It seems that by trying to simplify the events to appeal to the non sailing viewer these decisions have actually made it harder to understand, now men and women sail in completely contrasting events.

 Its going to be murder trying to explain why only men sail the 49er and only women sail match races, when I don't get it myself!

The loss of the Multihull baffles. If expense was the reason (the only one I can think of) then why not just choose a cheaper class. It is an especially poor decision when the star remains.

Cats represent the olympic vision much better than keelboats. fitness, skill, and excitment should be the key, the Olympics are elitist and and only top atheletes should be there. Sailing should want to present itself as exciting and accessable to the wider audience. Keelboat are neither. 

Edited by E.J.

has anyone seen the olympics televised in the uk anyways. am not sure how much it is in any country

Interesting quote from Ian Walker...

Magnus,

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. 24 hours ago I thought the ISAF Events Committee had sobered up from their night on the tiles by deciding to axe the 2 keelboat classes - at last they have seen some sense. Get rid of the 2 most expensive boats to campaign that hardly anybody sails - obvious! They have now perfected a U turn faster than any modern political party. If ISAF cannot see that high performance dinghies are the way of the future and that the obvious way to increase female participation in the Olympics (and the sport) was the women’s high performance dinghy then there is little hope. How can you possibly justify ruling out a women’s high performance dinghy in favour of women’s match racing? How many countries have a women’s match racer? Is this the future of our sport? Compared to high performance sailing, match racing is dull and the technicalities are understood by few - there is no obvious feeder (except maybe university team racing) and the bigger countries will simply 'out coach' the smaller nations to victory. If match racing is so good why has it already been kicked out of the Olympics for the men? If it is so good then surely have it for men and women! I suspect it is simply a convenient way of getting the number of female competitors up with only 1 medal allocated. The saddest thing in all this is that Weymouth is a fantastic venue for high performance sailing and there will be lots of female 29er youth sailors who will not be able to move up to the Olympic classes. I wonder how many young sailors were asked for their opinions by ISAF? Whilst nobody will shed a tear for the Yngling which should clearly have never been an Olympic Class, what about the Tornados? Surely it offers more of a spectacle than Finn sailing? Surely it is more appealing than Star sailing?  I have sailed Stars in the Olympics and even I think they should not be in the Games. As you rightly point out there is light at the end of the tunnel as ISAF Council will probably make another U turn and change this decision when they next meet, which kind of begs the question why have the committees in the first place. I'm with you – let’s bin the committees and have a dictatorship. The question is 'who would make the best dictator?'

Keep up the good work and watch your back!

Ian