Are you reading, World Sailing?

Different sport, same doodah?

Rather reassuring to see Alex Goode go on a bender around St Albans still in his kit after three days, following Saracens European Cup win ...

Originally posted by Riv The issue is that activities based upon centrally controlled sporting activities are inflexible. There is one model developed at one time and governing bodies find it difficult or impossible to adapt. Dinghy racing was developed in the 50's. It is now outdated.Cricket has the same problem

I dunno. I think its more that in an era of dilettantes, sports which require sustained training and skill levels are going to struggle, most especially if they require a lot of time as well.

Originally posted by JimC sports which require sustained training

Because sailing is famous for all the hours sailors go training outside of racing... I think if you actually explained to people who do endurance sports how 99.9% of club sailors just rock up for racing once a week, year in year out, they'd think it was even more mickey mouse than they probably already do.

What could be more dilettante than a sport with so many divisions where you can always move to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, or blame the weather or complex equipment?

Maybe its simply that sports become victims of their own success, their demographics and structures get preserved in amber and then society moves on more quickly than they can adapt.

The fact that so many fading boomer sports spend all their time externalising the reasons for their decline - 'people are too lazy..yada, yada' probably doesn't help.

Sailing is rubbish at articulating what is actually good about it to outsiders. The governing bodies and media have seized on the performance advances but they're of little relevance to those starting out.