New Posts New Posts RSS Feed: The Olympic Curse
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

The Olympic Curse
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 34567>
Author
  Share Topic Share Topic  Topic Search Topic Search  Topic Options Topic Options
Jack Sparrow View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 08 Feb 05
Location: United Kingdom
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2965 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Jack Sparrow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Olympic Curse
    Posted: 15 Aug 14 at 7:02pm
Originally posted by Presuming Ed



Originally posted by Jack Sparrow

In short it's the Sport you are winning a medal in, NOT best use of a certain brand of equipment.

I don't see how you can separate out the use of equipment in an equipment sport. Tennis players choose their racquets according to how they play the game. Sailors choose classes according to their own strengths and weaknesses - 470 vs 49er, for example. Less common in bigger rowing boats, but in small boats - singles, doubles and pairs, there is much effort put into selecting the right equipment, that works with the way the oarsmen & women scull & row. In bigger boats, most just go for Empachers.  Smile
As as for the choice of Finn or Phantom, Laser or Solo, well, that's a choice made by ISAF using a framework and criteria that they decide. So not simply arbitrary. Otherwise we'd have been watching TOYs or SVODs or something like that in Weymouth. 



OK arbitrary in the sense that the equipment used could be anyone of a type suitable for competing against others of a given size and gender singularly or as a team.
Farr 3.7 Class Website
Farr 3.7 Building - Facebook Group
Back to Top
Jack Sparrow View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 08 Feb 05
Location: United Kingdom
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2965 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Jack Sparrow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Aug 14 at 7:07pm
Originally posted by winging it

I think sailors decide whether or not they want to go Olympic, then choose the boat that best suits their body type, budget etc.


Or whoever is selecting them out of squads seeing there physic fitting the current Olympic equipment. With the sailors having already made there mind up (like you say) about the class of equipment that plays to there body type that allows them to follow a path that ultimately leads them to the Olympics.
Farr 3.7 Class Website
Farr 3.7 Building - Facebook Group
Back to Top
Chris 249 View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 10 May 04
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Aug 14 at 10:14pm
Originally posted by Jack Sparrow

I don't really understand the why this topic gets discussed so relatively often.

The Olympic discipline is 'Sailing' the 'equipment' used for each variation is effectively 'arbitrary'. The equipment is a vehicle to achieve a gold medal.

We don't discus the make of Pole used in the Pole Vault. Or the Bikes in the Road Race. Or make of boat in the Rowing.

A chosen classes only function is to deliver a platform to produce a winner in a specific gender, weight, athletic function and or combination of these. The best sailing athletes from a given counties sailing system rise to the top and then train on whatever 'arbitrary' sailing platform is deemed appropriate to test these factors and be visual enough to entertain the public in doing so.

In short it's the Sport you are winning a medal in, NOT best use of a certain brand of equipment.


It's a good point and very true in many ways, so I'm not disagreeing with you; merely looking at the same issue from another angle, or using it to discuss another question.

We could say that sailing is in a different position to other sports because it has a very different type of organisation. To use the analogy of bikes in the road race; just about all bikes built and used for organised road racing down to lower club grades fit into the same single set of restrictive design regulations. Things like weight, size, design and speed don't vary anywhere near as much as they do in sailing. 

In contrast, there are 10 International classes that fit the Laser's "adult singlehanded dinghy" and there must be over 100 that race at national level, and their designs vary a hell of a lot more, ranging from about 28kg to about 130 (?), from 11' to 17', and in design from the foiling Moth to the mahogany 1913 vintage International 12 or the Finn.

When one class has to be used to represent such a wide discipline as singlehanded dinghy sailing, it's arguably in a very unusual position and that has a lot of impacts on it, IMHO.

For some strange reason the general subject of design regulation of sports equipment, and the effect on participation rates, has been almost ignored by commentators and the academics who fill journals and make careers out of writing and teaching about the administration, philosophy and sociology of sport, but sailing is a really interesting place to look at this stuff.







Edited by Chris 249 - 15 Aug 14 at 10:16pm
Back to Top
Chris 249 View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 10 May 04
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Aug 14 at 10:55pm
Originally posted by Dougaldog


Aids to sitting out were allowed, which resulted in some really novel solutions, but for this first set of Trials the trapeze was specifically banned. I have a lovely quote from an IYRU Council member who felt that sailing a boat, single handed, from the trapeze was a damn foolish thing to do; Racing it thus was just unseamanlike! 

I'll have to get a copy of your article on those fascinating trials, but at the moment I can't find anything about traps being banned. I'm going off things like David Thomas' piece in Yachting World of November 1965 where he wrote that for the first trials at Weymouth, the IYRU Class Policy and Organisation Committee recommended to the selection committee that (among other things);

"(iii) the boat should not be so extreme, particularly it (sic) that it must not have such a large sail area that it would give undue advantage to helmsmen of exceptional weight and size."

and;

"There will be no restrictions imposed on the sail area, size or design of the boats entered."

The "there shall be no restrictions imposed on (the) design" seems pretty blunt. Was the "specific ban" of the trapeze in another document, or was it inferred from part (iii) of the recommendations, which said that boats should not be too extreme?

My research on the ISAF trials centred on other areas and I've tried to cover a very wide range of space and time because I'm interested in wide trends and the inter-relationship of various national and international types and designs, as well as looking at many other classes in some detail, so I haven't done the sort of detailed interviews that you have carried out. 

When I was looking up stuff on the "Olympic curse" I did find a reference from the early '70s where ISAF's Vice President was saying that they did not want to organise sailing trials ever again, so it seems that they may have been burned too. As a general note, of course one man's "political decision" can be another man's "logical outcome", depending on the way the final choice went! Big smile

I have found a quote that brings the ISAF trials and the "Olympic curse" subject back together. When the new International singlehander was first mooted, David Thomas wrote that the Finn "lost any chance it might have had of becoming a 'popular' single-handed dinghy as soon as people began to discover the scope  of what was intended to be the simplest and least complicated rig of all. (Elvstrom developed the rig and) set an Olympian standard that few could emulate...This, in a way, was the Finn's undoing. There is now room for an International class which is not quite so demanding and in which yachtsmen can race together on an international basis without being constantly observed for their Olympic potential."
Back to Top
iiitick View Drop Down
Far too distracted from work
Far too distracted from work


Joined: 04 Jun 14
Location: gb
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 478 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iiitick Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Aug 14 at 11:17pm
On the whole I do not disagree with the choice of Olympic boats except that....(and here I go again) the womens single hander is not suitable for the average fit young woman. The average athletic non Amazonian girl is too small for the Radial. I do not need to say what it ought to be.....
Back to Top
Dougaldog View Drop Down
Far too distracted from work
Far too distracted from work


Joined: 05 Nov 10
Location: hamble
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 356 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Dougaldog Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Aug 14 at 9:49am
Chris (249)
I'd say that you'd read between the lines with 20-20 vision! The original design criteria were very loose but were then changed to a somewhat more rigid box rule - they didn't want any narrow canoe shapes and for a time there was talk of a rise of floor measurement to avoid the more extreme hull forms. The sail area then ended up being fixed at 10m2 - an interesting point given that the IC was invited to Weymouth but only as a 'stalking horse' (a very well sailed Finn was there too).

There was also (iir) a freeboard measurement that caught out the jack Knights/David Binks effort.

Interestingly, the sail area and freeboard calculations caught out Bob Miller, as the first version of Contender (the La Baule variant) was lacking in both - Bob had to make changes for medemeblik!

D
Dougal H
Back to Top
rich96 View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more


Joined: 20 Jan 05
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 596 		Post Options Post Options   Quote rich96 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 14 at 8:52am
24 Standard Lasers at their Nationals !

We used to have more than that for club races.

Back to Top
JimC View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 17 May 04
Location: United Kingdom
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 14 at 11:42am
Maybe we should talk about a youth curse rather than an Olympic curse? Has the phenomenal growth in youth sailing hidden a decline in adult sailing, and if an event gains a large percentage of youth sailors do adults stop going?
Back to Top
winging it View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 22 Mar 07
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3958 		Post Options Post Options   Quote winging it Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 14 at 4:00pm
There is no doubt that selection as a Pathway class drives away the adults. How often do you see adults racing toppers these days?
the same, but different...

Back to Top
kneewrecker View Drop Down
Really should get out more
Really should get out more
Avatar

Joined: 09 Apr 14
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1586 		Post Options Post Options   Quote kneewrecker Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Aug 14 at 4:07pm
Originally posted by JimC

Maybe we should talk about a youth curse rather than an Olympic curse? Has the phenomenal growth in youth sailing hidden a decline in adult sailing, and if an event gains a large percentage of youth sailors do adults stop going?


An excellent observation....
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 34567>

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Bulletin Board Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 9.665y
Copyright ©2001-2010 Web Wiz
Change your personal settings, or read our privacy policy