WS/Olympic Sailing Open letter and petition
Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: Dinghy classes
Forum Name: Dinghy development
Forum Discription: The latest moves in the dinghy market
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13056
Printed Date: 01 Jul 25 at 10:29pm
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Topic: WS/Olympic Sailing Open letter and petition
Posted By: Bootscooter
Subject: WS/Olympic Sailing Open letter and petition
Date Posted: 02 May 18 at 9:33pm
| I’m sure most are aware of the |
Replies:
Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 02 May 18 at 9:48pm
I quite like the idea of Kite Lessons for Finn Sailors.  ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |
Posted By: Noah
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 7:25am
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Link not working...
Edit: I found the https://www.change.org/p/world-sailing-executive-world-sailing-executive-please-save-our-sport?" rel="nofollow - letter and petition here . ------------- Nick D-Zero 316 |
Posted By: Bootscooter
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 10:30am
Thanks Noah  ------------- |
Posted By: Cirrus
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 11:48am
| Is Sailing best served overall by involvement at the Olympics ? Maybe .. but maybe not .... |
Posted By: L123456
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 11:52am
Without the Olympic money the sport would suffer. For a start just look at how it would hit the RYA.
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Posted By: Cirrus
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 1:19pm
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Without the Olympic money the sport would suffer. In what way ? Sailing was arguably a lot more popular before the pursuit of income streams by national bodies became the 'be all and end all' we are now so familiar with. Modification of the sport to suit the attention span assumed for TV viewing for example ? ... well how successful has that has proven in supporting and spreading the sailing message thus far ? Money can help - well yes but only to a limited extent. So don't let kid ourselves any bucket of money, spent as now, will solve much. |
Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 1:39pm
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Agreed, the Olympics and the common man are more separate now than at any time in the past. If sailing were not in it, then maybe our blessed Governing body would be forced to turn it's head back to the grass roots and pay more attention to the needs of the many rather than the few. We don't need armies of psychobabblists physios, nutricionists etc & vast amounts of equipment and transport, we need just a little more love spread wider.
Screw World Sailing, it's got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what most of us do, exactly the same relationship as Fifa and coats off for goalposts on a saturday morning. ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 5:41pm
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Posted By: ian.r.mcdonald
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 7:13pm
| losing sailing from the Olympics would be sad because of the loss of history but the best thing ever for club sailing. The Rya could focus on grass roots sailing and abandon the squad system which turns out a few excellent sailors whilst turning most away from sailing long term |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 7:18pm
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I think the RYA might treat dinghy clubs with even more contempt... focusing on motor and yachts stuff only
But I do agree with the sentiments above, even at the risk of a worse outlook for U.K. dinghy sailing |
Posted By: JimC
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 7:25pm
| Thing is though whilst the Squad system would probably collapse the support for grass roots sailing would be at best totally unchanged because there would be no more money. More likely we'd find that loss of non financial spinoff from the training programme would affect clubs. Then there's all the extra status and co-operation you get from local authorities and companies because its a high profile Olympic sport: you could kiss goodbye to all that too... |
Posted By: L123456
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 7:53pm
Indeed, plus the Olympic gravel train funds the companies we buy from, many of them wouldn’t survive off what grass roots sailing spends. The financial impact would be significant.
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Posted By: 423zero
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 8:38pm
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Not sure on this one, I do watch olympic sailing when it is on tv. Personal dislike of RYA appears to colour some posters views. I can't see how being "in" olympics or "out" will affect my club and it's problems.
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Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 8:45pm
The flip side is that a bit of healthy market consolidation might be just the kick up the arse dinghy sailing needs to get back to promoting class racing at local level. |
Posted By: Cirrus
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 9:22pm
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Olympic sailing represents a small sub-group of competitive sailing categories in any event. There is limited 'trickle-down' at best in terms of the general publics perception from the five ringed (TV) circus .. even if done extremely well every 4 years. The disproportionate focus on the income streams available to national sailing bodies arising from and alongside the Olympic process arguably distorts their general policy, direction and approach. This is partly because of the IOC ethos and its overall impact on world sport it is true and sailing is not the only sport to be influenced and 'modified'. In summary - a mixed blessing ? |
Posted By: L123456
Date Posted: 03 May 18 at 9:45pm
Would be nice to think so but I just think we’d end up like everywhere else where adult sailing gravitates to keelboats.
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Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 5:26am
| Maybe at the coast, but I think this happens a lot anyway. Inland it’s a different story... keelboats are a PITA. |
Posted By: PeterG
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 8:34am
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I would think that unless there was a major shift in attitudes to sports funding support loss of sailing from the Olympics would be entirely a negative for sailing. Sports funding is nearly entirely targeted at medals. If sailing losses the possibility of medals the funds will go elsewhere, they won't go to supporting clubs. And clubs would probably find they had less access to grants for sail training equipment etc. I'm no fan of Olympic sailing, or the impact on non squad sailing, but short of a major rethink on sports funding priorities clubs are much better off with sailing in the Olympics than not. ------------- Peter Ex Cont 707 Ex Laser 189635 DY 59 |
Posted By: DiscoBall
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 8:40am
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I don't think the petition mentions, but the other part of the new proposal is short-handed offshore race. So boats costing upwards of 150000 quid, that's not going to expose the sport to any ridicule at all...
Jim - there are plenty of grant giving bodies giving money to non-competitive activities. Much of the growth in new sports (Climbing, SUP etc) has no reference to the Olympics or governing bodies. I think there was a survey (maybe sport England?) that indicated that for many people the association with competition and elite sport is actually a turnoff. |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 8:47am
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There could be something in that... group exercise
Classes run by the local council are always over subscribed, whereas both the hockey and rugby clubs are permanently advertising for fresh meat- even if you’ve never played before. |
Posted By: johnr
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 9:10am
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There is already a heavy disconnect between adult sailing and the Olympic classes in the UK and this is seen in nationals attendance figures and the competitors in this classes. Basically unless you are an aspiring Olympian then you are unlikely to sail and Olympic class.
In general people with jobs and families don't take much enjoyment in being thrashed by a full time athlete and hence are unwilling to sail against Olympians. Even if they had the same natural talent they would be thrashed physically and time in the boat. We have a pretty dysfunctional youth system in that we process 100-200 opti kids every year into a winner takes all situation with consequently high drop out rates. This happens because of the Olympic programme paid for by lottery funding etc. Sailing is a participation sport and shall always be so. Whilst I don't agree that kitesurfing or wavesailing should be in the Olympics if they want to mess up their gravy train then so be it. I won't be anymore likely to watch it than I currently am as I am too busy actually sailing. |
Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 9:58am
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Other than the suggestion of Kites in the Olympics, I did read that guys letter, the chair or president of WS and tended to agree with his view.
Some of that old dross, 470, Finn should have gone years ago. lets take the Finn, much loved by half of folk on here, arguably it had some of the best TV coverage of the 2012 Olympics, a great battle,l a good (if dodgy) outcome for the UK, a National figure beating the Danish insurgent thanks to a little help from his friends, that the world would never have noticed anyway. Then what? Did we see an explosion of Finn uptake? Er no, I wonder why that was then? So you can pour as much lipstick as you like on a pig, and that pig carries all our fortunes on its back, but it still remains a pig and nobody bought into it. Why? Because it's inaccessible. Inaccessible is our biggest issue. Inaccessible for a number of reasons not least of which is expense and the Finn is right at the top of that pile. Now I'm not saying that Olympic craft should be accessible to all, but they should at least be visible, the reason the Laser hangs on in there is because of visibility and accessibility yet there lies another story of garbage in garbage out. Meanwhile during all this a UK company takes note of all the moans about heavy, difficult, and price and launches a light modern product and literally has it away in terms of sales volume but are we ever likely to capitalise on it, use it to market the sport further afield thanks to the powers that be in World Sailing? No, because those guys are Brits and they wouldn't dream of filling brown envelopes with favours and lobbying all the MNA's to get their equipment supplied for Olympic consumption or even have the time and personnel to do it. So we're left with whatever these 'people' give us, but maybe, just maybe the Finn war machine is running out of steam or it's war chest running out of favours, whatever it is that keeps that anachronism where it's been all these years does none of us any good and that sadly is a fact. ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |
Posted By: Fatboi
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 10:35am
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"So we're left with whatever these 'people' give us, but maybe, just maybe the Finn war machine is running out of steam or it's war chest running out of favours, whatever it is that keeps that anachronism where it's been all these years does none of us any good and that sadly is a fact."
How is it a fact? Also the Finn masters has it's second highest entry this year. You can pick up sails that have been used for a week for circa £400. Boats hold value and are less than a competitive Merlin, 505, fireball. the racing is good and people really friendly. A class which has a massive trickle down from the Olympics and thrives... sounds awful... |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 10:40am
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I’d planned to join a local club and sail in an evening series this summer, but the cost of participation worked out to £117 per race I’d likely do... that just doesn’t seem worth it at the moment. I can’t see how whatever class WS choose would change the economics for lite participants like me right now.
Now if there were a place that offered an Aero for charter for a race for £40, well that seems a lot easier to enjoy |
Posted By: Do Different
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 11:41am
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Call me a dopey romantic, yeah yeah "you're a dopey romantic" very funny. But I'm with Rat on this one. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows The thing we mostly hear people are looking for is a "nice time" away from stress and agro, beit the Amazon delivery driver on the clock and gps tablet or the teacher / doctor / nurse trying to manage heavy workloads. Stop trying to sell it as a sport; the keeners who want that will seek it out anyway.
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Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 12:02pm
| That is true - first and foremost is surely a love for being on the water? |
Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 12:11pm
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Rat is probably quite correct, but Rats are not complaining about reduction in their 'messing' about in boats and stuff and lots of them are standing up paddling things these days anyway, with no record of their numbers.
What we're discussing is what the competitive sailing sport, shop window to the world, currently the Olympics, should be and how it should be perceived by others. ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 12:50pm
And why wouldn’t they if they lived by a beach? Cheap, easy, accessible, suit all the family or the individual, multiple storage options with minimal loss of performance... you can even whack a sail on a lot of them, or do a bit of yoga. No signing on, no duties or working parties, Limited rules and even then they’re for guidance amongst fellow surfers... no sense that you’re letting the side down if you don’t show up for a few weeks due to other life commitments. The fact that some old crook on the internet says “they’re ghey” only adds to their appeal if you ask me
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Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 1:20pm
And there's some great deals, I hear one website probably run by the same crook is offering free gender re-assigment with every purchase.. ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |
Posted By: 423zero
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 1:26pm
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Haven't tried a SUP yet, I sail, cycle and do kayaking sit in and sit on, row. I have surfed (still do), wind surfed. kite surfed, power boating etc, just think SUPers look naff and are paddled by fashion victims.
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Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 1:57pm
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I think it depends - there’s a fair mix of disciplines, my own focus is surf SUP... basically it’s longboard surfing, but easier with a much higher wave count and ride length.
Flat water and fitness SUP less interests me, but each to her own. |
Posted By: RS400atC
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 3:43pm
Most people on SUPs make it look like a daft, awkward, inefficient alternative to a canoe or kayak. When I saw people surfing with SUPs it suddenly made a lot more sense. I live near a beach, we put more person-hours of dinghy racing on the water than the SUPs manage by a long chalk. But any form of 'being on the water' that isn't a jetski is fine by me. All this is irrelevant. The Olympics are not going to sell dinghy racing to the masses as something to take part in. So what do we want from the Olympics as regards sailing? |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 3:53pm
| It's not what we want that matters. It's what the people who make a living from the Olympics that matter. They want to make money. What's the best way to monetise Olympic sailing? That depends on which part of the gravy train you are on - sailor, organiser, builder, sail maker, advertiser. |
Posted By: DiscoBall
Date Posted: 04 May 18 at 4:44pm
I think about 210000 according to last year's watersport survey, so a sport that barely existed a few years ago is already at a participation level on a par with dinghy sailing. And all without anyone needing to be 'inspired' by seeing it in the Olympics on telly...funny that. Cheap and accessible and word of mouth works, governing bodies and elite sport are ultimately somewhat parasitic and don't drive participation. |
Posted By: Strangler
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 8:52am
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www.canadianyachting.ca/news-and-events/current/4470-opinion-paul-henderson-oly-world-sailing-has-it-wrong "Under some perceived cloud of the IOC removing the sport from the Games (which cannot happen – sailing is enshrined permanently)..." Can anyone explain this fundamental statement?
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Posted By: rich96
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 12:25pm
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[QUOTE=iGRF] Other than the suggestion of Kites in the Olympics, I did read that guys letter, the chair or president of WS and tended to agree with his view.
Some of that old dross, 470, Finn should have gone years ago. lets take the Finn, much loved by half of folk on here, arguably it had some of the best TV coverage of the 2012 Olympics, a great battle,l a good (if dodgy) outcome for the UK, a National figure beating the Danish insurgent thanks to a little help from his friends, that the world would never have noticed anyway. Then what? Did we see an explosion of Finn uptake? Er no, I wonder why that was then? So you can pour as much lipstick as you like on a pig, and that pig carries all our fortunes on its back, but it still remains a pig and nobody bought into it. Why? Because it's inaccessible. QUOTE] ? Why is it inaccessible ? What other mainstream class can 10 - 15 year old boats still win ?. The kit lasts and retains its value very well. Its actually not expensive to run a Finn if you are sensible. The class is very healthy in the UK and many many other countries There is a waiting list for new boats There is nothing else like it and, until you have sailed one, you cant make sweeping judgments like you have above. |
Posted By: fab100
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 12:33pm
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I think SUP has a place within sailing in the Olympics; the SUPers have to paddle from one mark to another, the sailors plane past, their objective to knock them over like skittles with their booms (or anything else). Once off the SUP, they are out. Sailors get time benefits for every skittled SUPer. The un-skittled SUPers who first gets to their target mark wins his event, Now if that is not telly-friendly - and encouraging of people sailing, I don't know what is. ------------- http://clubsailor.co.uk/wp/club-sailor-from-back-to-front/" rel="nofollow - Great book for Club Sailors here |
Posted By: JimC
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 12:55pm
In any class in which 10-15 year old boats can still win, then, unless they are really lightly used boats kept especially for major events only, it suggests to me that the pressure of competition is not that high. Week in week out use, no matter how expensive the materials and construction, is bound to take a toll. |
Posted By: KazRob
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 1:43pm
Not at all and unstayed masts put totally different loads on a hull than rigs with stays do. After all the Finn is famous for being the boat where flexibility of the hull wins. There used to be a super stiff nomex Finn around and it was dog slow and it was well known that older, soft Finns were faster than new stiff ones. It took until the 90s to work out how to make new boats soft in the right places. In the OK, which is similar in concept to the Finn, but without the rig loads and a much lighter hull, a 20yr old ply/foam/ply hull got 3rd or 4th in a fairly windy Euros a few years ago ------------- OK 2249 D-1 138 |
Posted By: Sam.Spoons
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 2:55pm
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Sailed an OK in my youth, great boat. Curious to know a bit about why in the Finn flexible is fast when every other class seems to prize stiffness.... ------------- Spice 346 "Flat Broke" Blaze 671 "supersonic soap dish" |
Posted By: rich96
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 3:38pm
Thanks - you have exactly confirmed my point Finns need to be soft in certain areas and some certainly improve with age/use In the 80s the best boats were the most worn |
Posted By: blueboy
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 5:27pm
That is 100% wrong in the case of climbing. There's huge attention right now on what the BMC (the "governing body") needs to do to continue to get Sport England funding and whether the structural changes required are worth the £££ that might accrue. The growth of indoor climbing is exactly what is driving that debate.
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Posted By: blueboy
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 5:33pm
That's what clubs are for.
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Posted By: Rupert
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 6:35pm
And rya people are happy to interact with clubs in any way the club wants. There are people employed by the rya to specifically work with grass roots sailing, and with things like sailability, too, within clubs. ------------- Firefly 2324, Puffin 229, Minisail 3446 Mirror 70686 |
Posted By: Chris 249
Date Posted: 05 May 18 at 10:43pm
He may be referring to the fact that the IOC's Olympic Programme Commission is not, as often inferred, driven only by ratings and what's kool wiv yoof. There's some 70+ criteria that are used to choose sports, and history alone (which is one place where sailing scores well) are just about as important as media, for example. If I recall correctly, the OPC gives a lot of credence to whether a sport was in the Games from the start, which sailing was meant to be - technical problems prevented the sailing from happening at the first modern Olympics but it's been raced for at almost every one since then. Some of that may dovetail in with the equity issue, since it was the first sport in which women competed and the first one in which a woman won Gold. Henderson has said that criteria of this sort indicate that sailing's place is actually secure. ------------- sailcraftblog.wordpress.com The history and design of the racing dinghy. |
Posted By: L123456
Date Posted: 06 May 18 at 8:44am
Very interesting post. Thanks.
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Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 06 May 18 at 3:15pm
Well I found that funny... 😜 I’m also sure that in some corner of the internet there are a group of SUP riders planning their assault on the canoeing medals, but as someone who has just got 3 sessions in this week, I can assure you the last thing I’d want is to have this sport/pastime ruined by the bloody olympics. |
Posted By: 423zero
Date Posted: 06 May 18 at 4:25pm
| Yes brilliant and the SUPers can use their paddle like a gladiators pugel stick |
Posted By: DiscoBall
Date Posted: 06 May 18 at 9:37pm
Did the BMC create the growth in indoor climbing or are they just scrabbling to 'manage' something that has grown from grassroots? And that growth still didn't need an Olympic event to 'inspire' it...
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Posted By: fab100
Date Posted: 06 May 18 at 9:54pm
I’d take that refinement ------------- http://clubsailor.co.uk/wp/club-sailor-from-back-to-front/" rel="nofollow - Great book for Club Sailors here |
Posted By: blueboy
Date Posted: 07 May 18 at 7:51am
On the competition side, yes.
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Posted By: DiscoBall
Date Posted: 12 May 18 at 1:41pm
And the competition side accounts for how much of the sport? Everyone and their dog appears to go indoor climbing these days but I've never met anyone who does it competitively. So, assuming the BMC didn't invent indoor climbing, I'd suggest that they feeding off the success of a recreational boom that had little to do with them. Ditto British Canoeing now crowing about being the biggest watersport as though they had some hand in it, when they've spent years trying to pretend SUP and SOT kayaks didn't exist... I think the new Olympic format is dubious, but really the petition seems more about one gravy train defending it's turf from another. |
Posted By: turnturtle
Date Posted: 13 May 18 at 10:19am
This says it all |
Posted By: fab100
Date Posted: 14 May 18 at 10:14am
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Now if sailing is changing its equipment, I think cycling should innovate too  ------------- http://clubsailor.co.uk/wp/club-sailor-from-back-to-front/" rel="nofollow - Great book for Club Sailors here |
Posted By: iGRF
Date Posted: 14 May 18 at 3:04pm
That picture should be captioned "if sailing were cycling... ------------- https://www.corekite.co.uk/snow-accessories-11-c.asp" rel="nofollow - Snow Equipment Deals https://www.corekite.co.uk" rel="nofollow - New Core Kite website |