New ladies skiff

All this argument about throwing existing classes out of the olympics doesn't really stack up. Lets face it where are the large UK fleets of yinglings, europes, and the new match racing boats. The laser radial is the only commonly sailed boat in the womens fleet and most of those are probably sailed by people who are not travelling to major national or worldwide championships. When I windsurfed I did not go down a beach to see a single olympic set of kit in sight. Olympic sailing is now a professional sport where talent, money (Lotery funding is and option here) and a dedication from a relatively young age is required to succeed.

Things like Formula One are a success measured by people making money out of the sport.
Some people want that from sailing.
I don't. I'm happy for the media circus events to exist, but I don't want them adversly affecting amateur sailing.
Where the two come into conflict, amateur participation sport will suffer.
It's never going to be like marathon running, where any amateur can be in the same race and TV will make money from it.

That's a separate debate from skiffs vs more convetional dinghies.
Seeing a few youngsters really enjoying the performance of 29ers makes me certain that there is a future for fast asymmetric boats, for some people it's a better aspiration than tactical fleet racing in Wayfarers or whatever.
Things change slowly in sailing, the SMOD-asy boats of the nineties, including the 400, were a compromise that seemed right at the time, hence the trend has stalled. At some point, enough people will want to move on from that.
I'm not sure that there are very many trapeze helming female helms in the UK though? If you count up all those that have done an open meeting in RS800, 600, 700, contender, MPS, Cherub this year, I suspect you could get them all in a minibus. So I'm not sure why it should be an Olympic category.
I don't think other sports invent categories for the Olympics, don't they tend to adopt existing ones?

But give it 8 years and we could see real growth in this area, but there will need to be a twin wire yoof boat to bring young people in. Some countries are ahead of us with that, using the RS500.

Originally posted by Menace Originally posted by fudheid Originally posted by Chris 249 [QUOTE=ham4sand] Has anyone EVER produced an evidence-based argument that shows we should be chucking "mainstream" classes out of the limelight in favour of faster boats? Yep, we get the old "the IOC wants higher ratings" line, but that's never backed up by evidence (as far as I have seen) that faster boats get more TV. And there's no evidence that "radical" boats are the future (they are a small minority EVERYWHERE, even when they get massive commercial and club support), or that bringing in skiff types won't hurt the other things the IOC requires from Olympic sports, like strong universal appeal. I think the ac45's where on TV they count as a new, fast, sexy format? Surely F1 cars encourage boys to kart and take up cheaper motorsports, why then can sailing not. i can remember seeing 18ftrs when i started (before they had wings) and dreaming of sailing them - it took a while but it encouraged me and my crew who was a windsurfer into dinghies..... doesn't matter what if more people sail whoop whoop! PS i don't think it shouldn't be split into girls boat, why not mixed like so many other dinghies +1! Brilliant!

Edited by Chris 249 - 21 Oct 11 at 2:02am

Originally posted by fudheid Originally posted by Chris 249 [QUOTE=ham4sand] Has anyone EVER produced an evidence-based argument that shows we should be chucking "mainstream" classes out of the limelight in favour of faster boats? Yep, we get the old "the IOC wants higher ratings" line, but that's never backed up by evidence (as far as I have seen) that faster boats get more TV. And there's no evidence that "radical" boats are the future (they are a small minority EVERYWHERE, even when they get massive commercial and club support), or that bringing in skiff types won't hurt the other things the IOC requires from Olympic sports, like strong universal appeal. I think the ac45's where on TV they count as a new, fast, sexy format? Surely F1 cars encourage boys to kart and take up cheaper motorsports, why then can sailing not. i can remember seeing 18ftrs when i started (before they had wings) and dreaming of sailing them - it took a while but it encouraged me and my crew who was a windsurfer into dinghies..... doesn't matter what if more people sail whoop whoop! PS i don't think it shouldn't be split into girls boat, why not mixed like so many other dinghies