Olympic 'finals' proposal

Sounds good to me (sorry). 

Lets face it, a sport where you can hardly ever tell who's winning a race, let alone the regatta, and the person who crosses the finish line first hasn't always won is not going to make great TV.   Even rowing (yawwn) seems to be a more popular spectator sport than sailing.

Especially given how well the GB team does at Olympic level, shockingly little coverage was shown from Athens - I didn't even manage to see ANY of the exciting new Tornado Sport races, despite combing the schedules.

Anything that increases the TV coverage has to be good - and the competitors will have just as much fun - and more if they get more attention and hence more sponsorship deals. 

rant over..

Interesting reading, but if sailing is so expensive to cover adequately, how come the BBC used to do a pretty good job of televising Ultra 30's and 18 foot Skiffs a few years back. Perhaps what we need to do is revise the classes sailed to make it more visually exciting and reflect what is happening in the sport.

We could probably benefit from ceasing to use boats designed in the 50's and embracing modern designs. Perhaps the adoption of a single design of foiling Moth for the lightweight singlehanders, Musto Skiffs for the bigger boys, 49ers and 18 foot skiffs for mixed events etc?

Dress it up however you like it, watching a Finn isn't exciting.