49er medal race

My thoughts in no particular order...

I'm afraid that sailing has been a bit of an embarrasment as a spectator sport this time round.  Boring as hell for most of it and then carnage.  Joe Public simply won't understand it...and it's all down to a ridiculous venue.

I did enjoy watching the 49er race, but it was a shame that the conditions were such that it just turned into a destruction derby.  As a sailor myself I could tell how gnarly those conditions were and I was wincing at evey bear away, but for people who don't sail, or possibly don't sail skiffs, it was impossible to convey how tricky a 2 sail gybe was or how tricky it was to get a 9er to point downhill again after it has come up head to wind after a swim.  The format made a bunch of highly skilled elite sailors look amateurish in the eyes of your average footy fan, it would be the same as runners ploughing through every hurdle, weightlifters dropping every bar, horse riders demolishing a course or a track cycling event turning into a pile up with the winner being the first back on their bike.

In my mind if ever there was a case for the 49er to be developed or even replaced by a multi rigged boat that was it, and no I'm not talking 12 foot skiffs and four rigs.  So many regattas now seem to have silly winds at either end of the spectrum, not sure if this is perhaps a recent "climate change" thing or it's more historical.  After having raced skiffs for a while now I really do appreciate the fact that I can have fully powered up full bore racing in such a variety of conditions, I would really like to see this adopted for an Olympic class that is undeniably over-ragged when things get really breezy.  How hard would it be to have the ability to change down to a 29erXX rig for big breeze, and perhaps we would have seen some more enjoyable racing that would appeal more to your average bloke in the street?

As much as I enjoyed the race and think the Danes deserved it, trying to explain that the Danes who looked like Croats won because they overtook some unknown people swimming round their boat becasue they'd used the big flag sail going down the course when perhaps they should not have, even though normally they would when sailing in that direction but not the other direction of course, but of course it's all subject to the commitee decision because perhaps they should not have used that Croatian boat without checking first, even though yes of course they are all the same, is hardly the "more easy to understand format" that the whole "medal race" idea was supposed to bring to the masses is it!

Classes hammering downwind with suitable sail area for the conditions and the big flaggy sail crossing the line first is!

The ISAF site seems to be unable to load on my computer. it just doesn't work. It worked yesterday, it doesn't work today, maybe it will work tomorrow. thats windows for you.

and today it loaded first time!

So the Spanish have learnt something from hosting the 32nd America's Cup, how to go to court and bore everyone.