Brave new televised world or the demise of Olympic sailing as the pinnacle of our sport? Personally, I lean to the latter and that is also the view taken in a scathing article by Magnus Wheatley in a well-known sailing newsletter this morning. http://www.sailing.org/meetings/2005november/papers/sub_025.pdf - http://www.sailing.org/meetings/2005november/papers/sub_025. pdf  Discuss.

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.

Sorry but the subject of choice of classes has been done to death on other threads. It would be more interesting if we could concentrate on the proposal at hand.

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..

The problem with a single-race final is that we all know that luck plays a significant part in an individual race. That's one of the good things about sailing; you might not be winning regularly but once in a while, the start comes right, the shifts all arrive at the right moment and you win.

In a series it all balances out and the cream rises to the top, but in an individual race, even I can win sometimes.

So that says, under this proposal, after four years (minimum) of training and preparation, you finish with a glorified lottery. I am staggered that the ISAF can propose this.

Why? What's so important about sailing being on the TV? Do you think the Olympics are there to entertain you or to find the best competitor? I happen to think the second but it's a valid question. 

Take your (1st) point Stefan - but you do get points credit for all the other races prior to the final, so it's not really a lottery - it just weights the final race by a yet to be specified amount.

Conversely, the first person over the line still isn't the winner - so it will continue to confuse the hell out of most TV watchers.  Ie Ben Ainsley won by coming last?   woss that about then?

Maybe traditional racing should be dumped in favour of parallel upwind down-wind slaloms.  Preferably in super-fast, hard to control boats ensuring lots of telivisable wipe outs.  More my kind of sailing. .  I jest .... or do I?

To your 2nd - I think both are important.  Everyone pays for the olympics, so probably have a right to enjoy watching it - and the more that watch the better the funding; plus there's also the worlds for finding the best sailors. 

How do you reckon that? We will be paying for the London Olympics but I'm not planning on paying for any others.

This is a collection of really crap ideas.

To pick on two;

[a weighting re-calculation given to the points achieved to give a

preferred weighting to the boat place 1 overall after race 10, and so on through to

boat 10]

This sounds as if the points leaders advantage will largely evaporate but for what purpose? If the weighting proposed is used, then surely the winner will still not be immediately obvious and someone (the ill informed commentator) will have to inform the watching masses who has actually won. 

[The final scoring system to be determined by the President in consultation with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) before the end of 2005].

So no consultation with sailors or even National Authorities but undue influence by broadcasters and the president who obviously already like the idea of a single race (potential) lottery to decide the medals.

In any case, Sailing is far from the only sport to have no obvious (to Joe public) result until the computer has worked it out.

Take the decathlon for instance - we watch the exhausted competitors amble around the final 1500m 'race' and never is the winner of that race the actual Gold medallist - we have to endure the prattling of the commentator pretending its a close finish while the computer works out who won. But we still love it (especially if a Brit is involved).

Almost any of the judged events are not won until the judge’s scores come up and are computed - and in the multi discipline events like Gymnastics, competitors are sometimes not even on the same apparatus at the same time. 

Yet in all these cases the points advantage built up by the leader is still intact going into the last shot, dive, run, apparatus or whatever - So why should sailing be treated any different?

The fact is sailing is complex to understand and very difficult to televise - messing with it like this doesn't really address those fundamental problems. i.e. joe public still will not comprehend "why boats don't go straight to the mark" or gybing into pressure, covering upwind or shifts at all - so unless we reduce the Final to a simple (reaching) drag race from A to B we can't ever expect the masses to 'get it'.

Funding erm yes.  I was thinking tax & TV licence but actually, a quick bit of internet research shows:

• lottery gave about £7m to sailing at Athens
• various private sponsors including Rover funded team GB
• no direct state funding

so as I don't buy lottery tickets or driver a Rover, maybe I shouldn't watch.  Oops.

For sure, they should ask the competitors.  And Hector's right "The fact is sailing is complex to understand and very difficult to televise"  

...Unless you adopt my high speed slalom face off.

Be that as it may, some of the 49er coverage had a number of my non-sailing mates looking on in awe. Close tactical racing is great to watch, but the Olympic are the biggest shop window our sport could dream of. Surely we should be encouraging people into the sport by advertising it for what it is:

Exciting and wet.

Secondly, should our Olympic guys not be sailing the most physically and mentally demanding boats available?

So we will have lottery funding for a lottery final race. How appropriate.

I disagree, making the last race non discardable removes the possibility of there being a final race show down like the one between Ainslie and Scheidt.

Forcing the discard into play is a great skill in sailing. And I think that the Ainslie Sheidt dogfight was athe best bit of yachting I have ever seen. Why remove that possibility?

Sailing requires a brain to watch and participate in, why dumb down for the sake of people who will still take the p**s anyway?

Good point. If non-sailing people mention to me sailing they have seen on TV, it is usually that footage.

Half of us couldn't even pull one up the slipway. The Finn and Star are the oldest two boats and also the most physically demanding.

I don't know if Fizzicist has ever wandered around a club when the Olympic classes are in town but last time I did, everyone looked frighteningly fit.

I don't think live sailing will ever be interesting or broadcast (too long) so; the last race show down is a bit of a red herring due to the fact that coverage will be highlights anyway.

So lets run a traditional series in a bunch of "cheap" exciting classes that creates the opportinity of good "thrills and spills" and opens the sport up to nations that don't have the same resources as GBR. The downside is we may win less medals.

Rick

We are getting away from the subject again, since the proposal has nothing to do with classes. But let's deal with this cost question and look at the "expensive" keelboats. If I remember rightly, one Yngling team reckoned they needed to raise £250K for a 4-year campaign. So the cost of the boat would have been around 10% of that. Most of the rest is modest salaries for the competitors, coaches and other support team, travel and living costs at regattas all over the world. Or consider Paul Cayard who supposedly spent $1M of his own money on his last Star campaign. Again, the boat was a tiny fraction of that. International sailing at the top level is not cheap but the cost of the boat has very little to do with it. The cost is driven by the level of professionalism you now have to bring to the campaign and the fact that it is a full-time occupation, not only for the sailors but for the teams that surround them. Sail the Olympics in Toppers if you like but it will still cost a fortune to win.

The proposal is about increasing media appeal - the classes sailed has a big impact on the media appeal. Just look what the 49er has done for Olympic Sailing.

As for the cost of a campaign the class does have an impact on the costs - shipping a Star around the world is considerably more expensive than turning up with a sailing bag and renting a Laser. That is why for years Robert Shiedt(sp?) competed in th Laser; now hes won 3 medals he can attract sponsors.

Coaching and living costs do contribute much of the cost but there can be no informed argument to say that a Star campaign is comparable with that of a Laser.

SO ... media appeal and classes sailed are linked and so are the costs ...

Rick

If you look at the Olympic Programme Commission Report (here: http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_953.pdf - http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_953.pdf  ) you'll see that among the things the IOC is concerned with are a) how much of each sport federation's revenues come from the Olympics, b) how expensive are the sports to stage and c) what sort of media return is there? The IOC, quite reasonably, doesn't want to become a sport federation's cash cow, and then have to put on a hugely expensive sport that nobody wants to watch. A significant proportion - I believe that it's actually a majority - of ISAF's funding is from the olympics, and so, to a degree, they are beholden to the IOC to establish a format which agrees with the IOC's aims.

Now, you may sat that all this proves is that sailing should get out of the olympics, and live on it's own feet. Personally, I feel that this is the wrong decision - first, there are many countries around the world where official support for sports is related to their olympic status - olympic sports get state support, non-olympic ones don't. Second, there are many sports trying to get in to the olympics because they understand the marketing potential. Getting out strikes me as cutting of your nose to spite your face.

What I personally have come to believe they should do is acknowledge that  sailing is not a great live broadcast sport. There are two ways to deal with broadcast media and sailing - a) an edited highlights programme and b) - which I believe is far more interesting - increasing exploitation of the internet, with a combination of internet broadcasting and virtual spectator type methods, using live GPS positioning.

Because the Radial is more widely sailed. And it was a dumb decision IMO. I suspect you won't see many light Asian women doing too well in the Radial, whereas the Europe rig can be tuned to the helm's weight, within reason.

Sorry but I find your story of the plucky Australian coming in the top 10 on a tiny budget rather far-fetched. It's a rich country with a lot of rich men interested in sailing. I seriously doubt some private sponsorship couldn't have been found. 

Thans for the positive responses this morning re my Scuttlebutt rant which by the way was edited severely and missed out some really scathing attacks on ISAF as a body.

We have to get away from the notion that Olympic sailing is a televisual enterprise. The truth is that with the Olympic race format as it is, there's no way we can produce a worthwhile medallist whilst playing up for the TV audiences. Firstly there isn't the money to put cameras on every boat and helicopters up in the sky for all the disciplines. Plus there's no guarantee to keep the public's attention for the entirety of one race, let alone a series of 11 or 15 races. So now we have two options:

1/ Leave the Olympics as it is and let the print journalists do their best to bring the story to the masses for the majority of the series and then the broadcasters step in for the final race showdowns.

2/ Scrap the format completely, cut the classes down to say exciting boats like the 49ers only. Two classes, male and female, four races a day, held just yards off a suitable beach venue with big breeze and surf, slalom courses and that's it. The TV cameras turn up for three days of sailing and then go back to the track and field...

I fear the latter will become inevitable within 20-30 years once a few Olympic venues suffer serious financial implications and sports are chopped away to save money. Personally I think classes like the Finn, Tornado, Yngling, Star, 470 and the windsurfers are relics of a distant past and don't reflect sailing today and are not exciting nor as attractive to yound sailors in the way that the skiff type dinghies are and they should be dropped. I know that upsets so many factions within sailing but it is inevitable as we continue into a TV/Media dominated future. Sailing has to live with that and has to adapt accordingly - sorry!

Another point I'd like to raise is this: How the hell do you get on the ISAF council? It seems to me to be the biggest boys club on the planet and is run by awful committees who don't see anything from any other point of view other than their own. It looks like a divisive system with back-slapping bureaucrats totally out of touch with reality...It has to change and encompass some younger, more in touch individuals with slightly more radical views with an eye to the global perspective...

Can I post my CV here Mark??  

Are you over 60 and do you have a blue blazer?

Rick

I know someone on the ISAF council. She has been sailing for years on and off, all her kids have grown up at the same club she sails at and are all great sailors. She is still out there every weekend in her Europe or crewing with her husband in a fifteen. Come to think of it she probably sails more regularly than many 'keen' sailors I know.

Maybe not younger, but certainly in touch. As for the rest - most seem to have been pretty active sailors all their lives. And anyway how many 20-30 year olds want to give up thier sailing to go and sit in conference for a week?

As for how they got there? I don't know - you had better ask them yourself

With respect though, you would see it as a TV/media dominated future, wouldn't you? It is how you earn your crust.

Actually, we are collectively watching less TV than we used to, especially the ABC1s the advertisers are interested in. More and more channels, fewer and fewer viewers.

I think the idea that there is going to be ever more professionalised sport, paid for my the media and ultimately by TV advertising, was just a phase that is already starting to recede. Sailing for the sailors, I say. Let the coach potatoes watch beach volleyball.

I've done a few stints on sailing committees and the trouble with saying there should be more active young sailors on them is that nobody actually wants to do it at that stage in their lives. They have other things to do. The idea that the RYA, ISAF and so on are fending off hordes of young sailors who want to take over the management is a ludicrous inversion of the reality of the situation. Generally those committees are full of people who would be delighted if a few different faces would take a turn.

"Because the Radial is more widely sailed. And it was a dumb decision IMO."

Irrespective of whether it was a dumb decision, the mere fact that the Radial is more widely sailed because it is cheaper is a very valid reason for nations to support it.

Well, since I've known the guy for years; since we all turned up for old-fashioned film nights to support his fundraising; since we all bought raffle tickets and all that sort of stuff, I'm pretty damn well sure there was not this mythical rich man.

If he had pots of money laying around he probably wouldn't now be working as a labourer.

Neither I or anyone I know has ever seen any evidence of rich men backing the Laser or board sailers. I know there is a rich man who backs the Tornado crews (which includes his son).

It's a bit amusing that you think you know about his financial affairs when you don't even know who I'm talking about.

Also note that one of the US reps in the last 2 or 3 Games (in a strict OD) makes and sells handbags to help support herself. If she had bundles of cash wandereing around would she bother to do that?

Increased use of graphics to make boats more identifiable?? Jeez, I must say I was really struggling to work out which 49er I was rooting for in Athens, I mean it was hard enough upwind with a big union flag on the sail and GBR up top, but when they hoisted their oh-so-subtle kites I was really struggling. Not. 

I wonder if they will extend that to other sports?  Can't wait to see a horse painted up nicely in red white and blue, or perhaps some 110m hurdlers with batman style capes in the colours of their country.  Or perhaps we could introduce "more attractive competitor outfits" or whatever it was to other sports too and include a degree of national identity, GBR in morris dancing kit versus lederhosen-clad GER athletes in the badminton final.  Bring it on.

Perhaps for ultimate viewing figures and F1 style pit lane interview opportunities with crash and burn potential, we limit it to Moths and 12' skiffs, give all the teams a bucket of epoxy and a few rolls of carbon, sailcloth and a sewing machine just after the opening ceremony and make it a one-race series on the last day of the games! (BTW that is not a genuine suggestion, OK)

I think that the proposal with a proportion of points being carried forward would be far more confusing than the original system- any idiot can figure that you add up all your points, and exclude your worst score. However with the proportion system I believe that it would result in points of 3.75 and 5.25 etc. which would be very confusing, and the mathematics and calculations could be more complex than the current system (which I think is simple)

The idea of a final is very worrying, turning sailing into a spot governed by the media, which whilst it brings money it isn’t beneficial for the sailors- I think in American Football the have to schedule the timing of the match to fit in with TV commercial breaks!!!! Sailing is a sport which needs a long series of races to eliminate the flukes caused by the fickle nature of the wind, race committee errors, and other variables out of the competitor’s hands. Also there are the matters of OCS/BFD calls, rule 42 infringements and gear failure the sailors is mostly at fault, but are often causes of protests and errors are sometimes made. The sailors can understand this, surely the idea of the Olympics Is to produce the best sailor, not the best TV footage.

The finals format would also encourage the worlds best sailors to bang corners etc. and take stupid risks to attempt a medal position.

It is not guaranteed that the final would give more exciting viewing, it could be held in a force 2-3. And how annoying for the general public be to watch their national superstar be OCS, or to be beaten by the guy who hits the left hand corner and gets lucky? The system of having a finals would be a two edged blade for the area of TV coverage: broadcasting companies would want to show the finals, but the first 10 races would be insignificant and boring, so would get far less coverage than normal.

Someone suggested that the worlds would still produce the best sailor, but with the worlds often a primary selector for the Olympics, the whole format of large regattas would be forced to mirror the Olympics, so that national authorities could select the best sailor for the Olympic regatta. Unless of course the RYA staged a single race to select the representative?

However I think the Olympics would still produce a good sailor, bear with me: the current system rewards the sailor that can perform consistently well over 10 of 11 (or 14 of 16 for the 49er) races. Whereas the proposed system would reward any sailor who can bodge together a half decent series, then keep their nerve to pull off a brilliant race under pressure when it really matters.

From personal experience I’m not a fan of the finals idea: at our squad training we had a couple of races at the end of each weekend to put into practice what we’d learnt, this also formed the selection series for the Eric Twiname regatta. On the last weekend the positions from the entire previous 5 weekends trainings formed race 1, and 3 more races were scheduled. But only one race was sailed

in shifty force 1-2 winds - an absolute lottery. From being in a qualifying position practically the whole way I wasn’t selected, this didn’t bother me too much, but a friend who had been in the top 3 the whole way missed out and was very disappointed and thought the way the system worked out (due to only having one race) was unfair.

Would these changes come in place for 2008, as the venue sounds fluky enough without adding another lottery element! If the changes are introduced for 2012 it would be a shame in my opinion, as it would be very trial and error, and could ruin what is sure to be a great regatta.

I think it all comes down to where ISAF and the IOC want to put the emphasis: either on the sailor and the public who understand the sport, and like me, think that normal tactical racing is interesting to watch; or the general public who can only be bothered to sit down for an hour to watch the ‘grand final’.

I know the topic has moved on slightly, but ive only just been able to get on the forum.

Oh come on.

Tornado not exciting.  FFS; evey sailor I know (well just about) says "I wish I had the time/money for a Tornado, they look so much fun".  Get a grip.

What we need is a mixture.  Some crash and burn, some around the cans and some long distance (for the faster boats; say 49er on a short course, say 20 miles) and the Tornado's on a decent course of around 50 miles (ECPR length)). and then factore all this into the results.

Some of the volvo series where the Tornado's were racing close to shote with the leaward mark just on the surf line looked fantastic. 

We also need the sailing to be somewhere there is (almost) 100% guaranteed wind - I have a feeling China is going to be a disaster.

well i suppose...

I think that television is going to kill the sport if we're not careful. It happened to windsurfing. As the boards got better and faster, and more televised people watch it and think 'wow, thats really cool, but i could never do that'. Showing the skiffs wiping out and jumping off waves is fine, but do we risk turning it into an extreme sport like windsurfing, where people are put off by the size and speed of these machines.

I refer to windsurfing because my dad used to very good at it (or so he says!), and he says that you could get 150 boards plus at events. He went to one at bala a couple of years ago an only ten others turned up. No one goes windsurfing now because its to extreme. We have loads of beginner boats, but if no one knows what they are what hope have we got?

well i suppose...

I think that television is going to kill the sport if we're not careful. It
happened to windsurfing. As the boards got better and faster, and more
televised people watch it and think 'wow, thats really cool, but i could
never do that'. Showing the skiffs wiping out and jumping off waves is
fine, but do we risk turning it into an extreme sport like windsurfing,
where people are put off by the size and speed of these machines.

I refer to windsurfing because my dad used to very good at it (or so he
says!), and he says that you could get 150 boards plus at events. He went
to one at bala a couple of years ago an only ten others turned up. No one
goes windsurfing now because its to extreme. We have loads of beginner
boats, but if no one knows what they are what hope have we got?

Didnt the 49ers have camera on during the athens games, i remember watching a clip from on board the boat

Throughout this thread there has been a lot of criticism of skiff sailing being detromental to the sport. I have to disagree. Within Scotland, the racing classes which are showing most growth are skiff classes such as the 49er and MPS. Yes, there may be not as many of the quoted skiff classes as the traditional boats but you have to consider that the newer classes have not been around for as long as the others and will obviously not be as abundant as classes which have been around for many decades. The skiffs also have been percieved to demand high ability and physical fitness for sailing so will not cater for as much sailors as the easier classes to sail. If you don't have such classes for people to aspire to, you will eliminate the emphasis for people to develope their sailing abilities to such a high level. When the Olympics were being televised in 2004, there was always discusion about the racing coming from pupils at the sailing school I worked at. The young kids could identify with sporting heros in the sailors which we put forward. Even people that I knew who had no interest in the sport were discussing the 49er racing with me. From that sort of perspective, the coverage must have been successful as it allowed "non-sailors" to understand it. I don't think it's a question of is television coverage what our sport needs? Our sport needs more television coverage! 

Fair comment Dennis, but the first post in this thread that raised the question of classes was the following one (edited for brevity).

"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."

So the criticism of classes (as so often happens) came from the high-performance "side" first.

Of note,  fully-televised skiff sailing with ratings (allegedly) greater than that of the cricket tests was around years ago. The 18s crashed and burned badly after that.

We have something like 150,000 live spectators on teh headland for the Hobart start. Live TV. And the fleet is dwindling. Just like the 18s did. Just like "high-performance" windsurfing did.

There's a national survey here which comes to the conclusion that there is basically not a strong correlation between the amount of publicity and sponsorship a sport receives, and the number of participants.

PS here the traditional skiff classes have been around much LONGER here than the other classes, and the skiff classes have the backing of clubs that often provide free storage, beer/boat money, subsidies for travel, help arrange sponsorship, and can just hand you over a skiff.

Yet the long term trend shows that the skiffs are in retreat - many clubs, even skiff clubs themselves (Balmain, Greenwich, Abbotsford, Hunters Hill, DAC, Yarra Bay, Gosford, North Harbour etc) have lost their skiffs over the past couple of decades. The 18s have died in NZ (although they are trying to revive them), WA, Queensland which had them for many, many decades.So even when it's not a question of the skiff classes being newer, they still remain less popular than other boats.

This is a complete bummer and we are a world away, but it's also a fact.

I bring it up not to diss skiffs, but to point out that the minority status of skiffs in some areas may not be due to their recent introduction, as they are a minority class even where they have been for 100 years.

I have to agree that criticism coming from different areas of the sport to another side is highly detromental. I believe it is a totally ignorant attitude to have and "in-fighting" within any sport has to be put to one side to allow for it to grow in a proper direction. Even although I class myself as a skiff sailor, I also love sailing traditional classes, yachts and multi-hulls. I have gained a lot more knowledge about the sport through not being tunnel visioned. Any sailing is good, so why try and make out it isn't just because it's something which may be unfamiliar to you. I recommend to anyone who has tunnel vision, try every area of the sport which you can and keep an open mind.

Olympic sport is for the elite; the fact that the types of people sailing 49er is narrow is no different to the fact that there are no 20st fatties winning the 100m.

Sailing can be a broad church due to the range of differnt boats accomodating different physical abilityis and skills but the peak of the sport will always have a level of natural selection.

So; lets make the Olympics represent the peak of the sport and not dumb it down ... just like all the other sports.

Fast tippy boats are more fun to watch ... that can't be argued with.

Rick

For exciting visually apealing racing.....  Maybe the ISAF should take a look at the Volvo Champions Race series......

Get the 2 most exciting Olympic classes (Tornado and 49er), invite the elite sailors, major sponsors, media / TV coverage, cherry picker over the water filming, grand stand on shore for spectators and a bottom mark 40 meters from the shore.

Volvo Champions series curtesy of Tornado guru Roland Gaebler

Calm down, boys!

Olympics ..... It's only a game after all

I'm convinced that many other sports had to compromise for the Olympics at some point. I know that some disciplines in equestrianism have been totally transformed by the Games, and the subsequent format adopted by all riders all over.

If there's a new set of rules - simpler, more immediately understandable by the non-sailing crowds, designed exclusively for the Olympics - would that be such an atrocious sacrilege? I don't think wearing pink tutus is the way forward, but getting public interest and shedding the image of an elitist sport would be a great idea.

In the meantime, you boys.... play nice! 

Stephen/Tornado_alive

This is aexactly what I was talking about in my post - get the racing close to the shore (maybe a shore break to make it more interesting).  Get TV in close - borrow the Amerca's cup marks which poeple / TV can site on / be stationed on.  Get some GOOD commentators who know what is going on.  Get some people around to expalin what is going on as well in the crowd.  The only way people will watch and enjoy it is to make them understand how it some of it works.

If we want to make things easy for the spectator then the Olympics should consist of a 3 boat team racing event in dinghies and a match racing event in a one design keelboat. Time limit for each race about 10/15 minutes. All teams to be mixed.

Would  it be good for the sport of sailing? As boats would be supplied by organisers sailing the Olympic circuit would be much cheaper. Sailors would drop out of fleet racing to take up the minority activities that lead to an Olympic qualification.

Gordon

Team racing would be great as an olympic sport (and it would be nice to see the Firefly back as an olympic class after 60 years!)and there would be plenty of action, but as for being obvious who is winning for the spectator, they would have to understand all the winning combinations to work out what was going on. I suppose an expert commentator would help, but it would for fleet racing, too.

As for the original proposal... Maybe professional wrestling should be an olympic sport instead? It has everything they are looking for...

If they can make cricket interesting on the telly with a bit of electronics, then it should not be too complicated to work out an on screen display to show which team is winning.

Could be fun - with microphones on the umpires boats, video analysis of mark roundings, protests etc.

Gordon

Originally posted by Cheeky Originally posted by Stefan Lloyd [QUOTE=Mags Actually, we are collectively watching less TV than we used to, especially the ABC1s the advertisers are interested in. More and more channels, fewer and fewer viewers. Where did you get this from? You work for Mori?

It's a well-established trend. People are wasting their time in front of PCs instead of wasting their time in front of the TV. Especially people with broadband. And as it happens, yes I do have access to and interest in some of the audience research in this area.

Interesting. I've looked at the ISAF annual reports and they do indeed get a large proportion of their funding from the Olympics. That certainly explains a lot.

Anyway, back to the subject of the thread. It looks like the proposal is going ahead.

From http://www.sailing.org/default.asp?ID=j1/Fh06/l - http://www.sailing.org/default.asp?ID=j1/Fh06/l  describing the ISAF conference. It would be nice to know what the sailors said but we aren't told.

The Olympic Debate

The debate centred around late submission 025 and in particular the issue of discards and the weighting of race results. Chairman of the ISAF Classes Committee Jeff MARTIN (GBR) joined the debate to give the view of the Olympic classes, whilst Olympic gold medallist and two-time http://www.sailing.org/worldsailor - ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Sofia http://www.sailing.org/bio.asp?ID=GRE%20B1 - BEKATOROU (GRE) gave a sailor’s opinion on the proposals. Olympic Format Working Party chair Kim ANDERSEN (DEN) also gave the benefit of the research undertaken, whilst supporting submission 025.

As expected the debate was in depth and lengthy, with the Committee deciding to support submission 025, but with votes on two provisos. First they approved an amendment to change the range of races for which the discard can be applied from 1-5 to 1-10 (1-15 for the 49er).

Can we also expect the decathlon (and heptathlon etc.) scoring system to be changed such that the final event decides (or is weighted in order to contrive to decide) the medals?

Re. the 'Change is difficult, but we have to move forward.'  - that's a statement that nobody could possibly argue with.  Surely the point is, 'Is this moving forward?'

Mike

Um, last time I checked 2, 4, 5, looked like you're losing - and you were...!!

(unless of course the others have a dsq...)

Which university was this??!!

I think this will have a detrimaental effect on the sport as a whole. You don't see the olympic commitee asking the javelin shot, and hammer throwers only being allowed 1 throw, an the jumpers being allowed 1 jump.

or why don't we make other "boring to watch" sports more exciting, by combing trap shhoting with equstrian. taking pot shots at the horses and riders, that'd make the TV audience more exited!?

Yes, I reached for the sick bag when I saw that quote. It is a rhetorical device designed purely to paint the opposition in a negative light.

There was an excellent recent letter from Malcolm McKeag on Scuttlebutt on the corrupting effect of Olympic money on the ISAF. http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/archived_Detail.asp?key=3220 - http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/archived_Detail.asp?key=32 20

Ah yes, the "closing the children's ward argument". "Give me more money or I'll have to close the children's ward. Imagine what people will say about that".

The question is, how would it look if the IOC threw out a major sport just to get better TV coverage? A hollow threat, I suspect.

Exactly what I was thinking, but you managed to put into words perfectly!

Mike

This debate is all very well but the IOC, the TV Companies and corporate sponsors will dictate what happens, when it happens at the Olympics. The ISAF are trying to keep our sport as an olympic sport and to do that those who are coughing up the biggest slice of the cash will have the biggest say

Accept it and move on.

This is all a very bad joke.  The Olympic Games should about top quality sport, not sacrificed for entertainment.

The discussion about the format is pretty irrelevant for 2008 anyway.  With the Beijing Olympics being sited in a wind-free venue, the event will be as interesting as watching paint dry.

What hapens at the Olympics will in itself have very little impact on grass roots sailing. What worries me is the number of classes and clubs who will think it a good idea to use the same fomat for other events.

In much the same way - when the Olympic classes started using trapezoid courses to enable one committee to manage 2 fleets, lots of clubs started using this course for their club or fleet racing. Many people seemed to believe that because the course was used in the Olympics it was in sme way the "official" course.

Gordon

Correct but that ideal dissappeared many years ago ... now it is a circus.

All top level sport is driven by money - just look at what a mess the media has made of football.

But I'm sure that most bidding cities would be delighted if the Olympic consisted of nothing more than swimming, gymnastics and athletics - the big selling/ratings winning events, with a few more cheap sports for colour - not ones where you have to build specialised arena/venues.

Baseball/softball have been dropped for the London Olympics - and not been replaced with anything else.

But I don't. I think of it, as it has been up to now, as the pinnacle of my sport. The same thing we all do but taken to the Nth degree. I don't really care whether Joe Public wants to watch it on TV and I don't think these proposals would make much difference to that anyway. Joe Public will always prefer Beach Volleyball. 

I don't see the AC as the pinnacle of sailing, although it is the pinnacle of cheque-book sailing. The point about Olympic sailing is it is reasonably accessible to anyone with the talent; at least that is the case in the UK. You could not say that about the AC.

If the objective of Olympic sailing is to find the best sailors in the world, the new format seriously damages that. If the objective is to produce exciting TV, it is ridiculously unlikely to succeed without many other changes. The proposals are half-baked by either set of criteria.

Dinghy sailing is a unique sport where the pinnacle cannot be reached by winning in 1 class, whatever the event is. To be considered a master you must be a multiple champ in many classes over many years.

All that happends with the Olympiic classes is that the olympics becomes the unofficial world champs. It strikes me the olympic selection is the kiss of death for any class in the UK...... why would anyone want to compete in a class where the only way to be the champ is to become a pro sailor and devote 5 years to a potentially fruitless campain.

Face it..... olympic sailing show cases nothing, is crap on TV and does nothing for grass roots sailing except present the sport as an elitist, expensive, boring white mans hobbie horse. None of which it is(or needs to be).

Lasers seem pretty unaffected as grassroots class - possibly a special case. Europes initially had an strong upsurge in interest, then fell away, at least in part for the reasons you suggest. Finns and Tornados survive as a grassroots classes here and there. In general though, I agree it's not obvious why a class would want Olympic selection. Selection followed by deselection is the nightmare scenario for a class. Without the Olympics, the Europe would probably still be going nicely as a niche lightweight/youth/women's class, as it was before selection. Having been selected then dropped, the outlook is bleak, since all the grassroots sailors have long gone.

And thats just touching the recent classes. I can't think of 1 class whaich has fared well out of olympic selection and the FD tale will bring a tear to any sailors eyes.

I know this thread is now a pointless 900+ posts long but to just pick up on one of the older points made......... I love sailing and I love watching sport on TV - I have never ever seen any sailing on TV which was entertaining, and every Olympics I appologise to my none sailing friends and make excuses that sailing really is exciting.

To reitterate, sailing in the Olympics is crap and unsuitable, doing nothing for the sport and nothing for the good of the games.

If I had to propose a class/format change it would be to sail in 1 class only, open to both sexes, match or team racing......knock out ladder.

Bumble may lack some historical perspective - the Firefly was an Olympic boat in 1948 and is still going strong. The Dragon of course is now more popular than when it was an Olympic boat - as is the Int 5.5m. The 12 sq m Sharpie still has active fleets in Norfolk and Holland

The FD worlds still get a fair few boats, as does the Tempest (the ultimate heavyweight trapeze class) and even the Soling. And I am convinced that the Star would continue if  they ever find an acceptable substitute.

Apart from the Laser and the 470, none of the present boats were ever intended to be popular mass appeal boats.

It was Bob Fisher who said recently that sailing should not be shown live. Edited highlights are a much better way of presenting the sport.

There are other sports in which nothing much happens for long periods... cycle road racing, cricket for instance. They only become interesting because there is so much to commentate on outside the central event, and because the production team make much use of analysis, infill material (history of the event, the fruit cake they had for tea..), action replay etc. Doesn't seem to work for sailing.

Gordon

Now they have changed Olympic fleet racing when will isaf get the pressure onto the open 60's.  You could race single handed around the world.  And then the first three back could race around a triangle in port race to see who is the winner.

It al seems weired and doesnt make a lot of sense.

Elmo's concern's about the influence of rule breaking and umpiring are justified. The rules give no redress for the victims of an infringment if there is no damage, or action is taken under rule 2 or 69.1(b).

There will still be requests for redress if a boat is holed (suffers damage). The fair sailing rule will be tested to the limit. My feeling is that the sport does not need an event which seems sure to produce a crop of Rule 69 disqualifications. Do we really want the majority of cases of gross misconduct to take place in the Olympic final in full view of the world TV audience.

We will probably need an umpire boat per competitor - with 2 umpires and a supervisor per boat! We won't see the racing merely a melee of RIBS.

A further point - the number of qualified umpires for fleet racing is exactly zero...as this function does not yet exist. The number of international judges in whom competitors have confidence to judge Rule 42 correctly is already limited. There will be some interesting moments in forthcoming events.

Gordon

Yes we had 10 boats at our Nationals.

But read what you quote. Our worlds did have a "fair few boats."

83 In Hungary this year, a fantastic event.

94 in Germany last time round.

Cheeky...

The Firefly still is a single-hander - there is an annual single-handed event and I believe that you can compete in all events as a nautical onanist - as long as you sail alone in all races

Dragon - those who can afford it are  sailing the ex-Olympic boat rather than other classes

Sharpie - at least they have international events

THe 470 was INTENDED as a popular boat - but then poor class management did little to protect the grass-root saolors

Aluminium is re-cyclable - Stars can continue sailing using recycled metal from broken masts topped up with re-cycled beer cans (or vote for a carbon mast.

FDs and Tempest - never popular in GB where sailing is increasingly seen as a sport for small competitors

The crew may think a lot is happening on a 49er (I am sure cricketers think they are very busy) but for the spectator there is not a lot going on

Gordon

As I dislike the act of not sailing the last race, I have said previously that I thought the idea of a non-discardable last race was a good one . I like this idea as well. According to the press release, so do the Olympic Classes representatives.

Its easy to think of potential problems (that will probably not occur) or to pick fault (where little exists). If those who will be sailing to these rules are happy - let them get on with it.

I look forward to watching 'the final' on the telly!

"This format will apply to all test events and the 2008 Olympic Regatta (for all classes)."

This is what bothers me, meven for most of us who don't sail olympic classes, and will never compete at the olympics, this format may seep into the major UK classes national regattas. 

Only if your class votes for it!

Surely "for all classes"  means "for all the Olympic classes.