This open email has just been sent by UKCRA:
Dear Petitioner
Thank you for signing the
IOC petition asking that multihulls be included in the Sailing Regatta
for the 2012 Olympics to be held in the UK. To date more than 5,700
petitioners including ISAF Sailors of the Year and Olympic medallists
have signed what is probably the largest ever grass roots expression of
concern at the management of our sport.
Goran Petersson, ISAF
President,’s statement after that November decision was that the
selection of Events demonstrated the modern nature and “the wide range
and diversity of sailing”. Excluding a large part of the sport makes
this patently untrue.
The multihull class was voted out at a
meeting of the ISAF Council in November last year. As organisers of the
petition, we have been waiting to see if its Executive Committee would
respond by taking the initiative in reconsidering the selection of
Olympic Events.
However, now that the minutes of ISAF’s February
Executive Meeting have been published, not only does it appear that
they have decided not to take the initiative, but it also seems that
they may reject submissions to re-open the debate at the current mid
year meeting, as not urgent, or at the annual meeting in November,
since they see the matter as closed.
This is in spite of a
right of appeal specifically and exclusively for this matter in
Regulation 16.1.3 (a). The Executive received letters of concern about
the selection of Events from several Member National Authorities, but
decided these were not urgent, even before receiving formal
submissions.
Furthermore in those Minutes it appears that the
Executive will nevertheless be asking Council to treat as urgent a
matter of retrospectively extending the deadline for Equipment
submissions in the Women’s Match Racing Event, even though Regulation
16.1.2 states that no submission for Equipment shall be made after 15th
March.
It seems thus the decision-making process is being
applied unequally to the disadvantage of one sizeable part of the
sailing community, while exceptions are made in favour of another.
We
have prepared a detailed Report on the subject to help people
understand better how such a widely unpopular decision was made in the
first place. ISAF was offered an opportunity to discuss it before
publication, but declined. You can download this Report at http://www.asnr29.dsl.pipex.com/ISAF_Events_Report.pdf - http://www.asnr29.dsl.pipex.com/ISAF_Events_Report.pdf
As
the initiative has now passed from the Executive to Member National
Authorities, and there are deadlines of March 13th for Events and March
15th for Equipment, our MNA, the Royal Yachting Association, has asked
us to encourage supporters to lobby their own MNA urgently.
Please
email the relevant people at your MNA and your ISAF Councillor with
your views. There is a menu of sample submissions attached, so you can
cut and paste whatever you find appropriate.
This is how
changes are made at ISAF and it is how effective lobbying by supporters
of Women’s Match Racing persuaded a record 11 countries to make
submissions in their favour, including many of them strong multihull
countries and many smaller countries, who are not directly represented
on Council. If they can do it, so should we because our research shows
that multihulls represent between 10 and 30% of all racing sailboats,
depending on what measure is used.
Before the November ISAF
meeting the multihull community was unaware what was at stake or what
to do to about it. Now that we know, we need to gather whatever
submissions we can, however short the notice.
Please contact the
people you know in your MNA to make the multihull case in general and
ask them specifically to make submissions, especially given the
constitutional issues involved. Australia, Denmark, France and the UK
have already done so in the last few days.
Please do it urgently.
Thank You
Nick Dewhirst
Chairman
United Kingdom Catamaran Racing Association
The attachment is at http://www.asnr29.dsl.pipex.com/ISAF_Sample_Submissions.rtf - http://www.asnr29.dsl.pipex.com/ISAF_Sample_Submissions.rtf
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