More thoughts on the 1980 Olympics boycott

As former Olympic sailors who also seriously campaigned for the British 1980 Olympic sailing team, we certainly agree with the attempt to get the Royal Yachting Association to change its policies so that it cannot cancel the participation by a British sailing team in an Olympic Games without proper consultation of the membership and of the international sailing team.

However, we absolutely do not agree with the implication that the people listed would have been the Olympic sailing team in 1980 and the attempts then to get accolades for this group during the 2012 Olympics in Britain.

The decision to cancel the participation of the British Sailing Team in the 1980 Olympics was taken by the Royal Yachting Association while the squad were all at the Hyeres regatta in April 1980. This regatta was held before we were due to have our Olympic selection trials regatta at Weymouth in May 1980. As a result, all Olympic campaigns finished that week of the Hyeres regatta.

Most of us then cancelled our plans for Weymouth Olympic Week, but Vernon Stratton, the Olympic Sailing Team Manager in 1980, personally telephoned round and implored us all still to go as the organisation for the regatta was all in place and he wanted as many of the sailors to turn up as possible, to ensure the future of the regatta in those amateur days. However, some of the leading competitors had already made other arrangements and did not answer the call to go to Weymouth, just two examples being Rodney Pattison in the FDs and David Howlett in the Stars, who were both the leading international sailors in their respective classes and considered virtual 'certs' for the Olympic team if there had been one selected.

Those that did go treated it just for what it was, a "fun" regatta, (of course under the circumstances it was not really much fun!). Many of us did not even use our best racing sails, but just older spare ones, and of course nobody had the adrenalin pumping from it being the Olympic Trials that had been worked towards for four years.

At the end of the regatta there was then a quite terrible decision made by the RYA, to award ‘certificates on velum' to the class winners at this "fun" regatta stating that they would have been part of the 1980 British Olympic sailing team if a team was being sent to the Games.

There was much dissatisfaction over this and several people wrote strong letters to Vernon Stratton after the event to complain about it. It was a major mistake and it is quite amazing that it has now led to the present position all these years later.

The whole idea that the winners of these certificates should now campaign to get some new, extra accolades over 30 years later is quite unbelievable. They won a relaxed, "fun" regatta, not an Olympic Trial. In fact, sailors who do get selected for the Olympic team and actually compete for Britain in the Games, do not receive anything for being in the British team (other than the team uniform), not even a certificate.

In terms of the RYA making the decision to cancel sending a British sailing team to the Olympics without any consultation, British sailing received little or no help or benefits from this decision not to go, despite being one of the very few sports that followed the Government directive.

Great Britain sent a team for nearly all other sports in 1980 and all the medallists were lauded as always. It should perhaps also be noted that the current head of the whole British Olympic effort for 2012, Lord Coe, became famous and got his big start to his highly successful career by winning a gold medal in a depleted field in athletics in the 1980 Olympic Games, which happened to be against his then Government's wishes.

The plain fact is, there was no 1980 British Olympic Sailing Team. It was all cancelled for the sailors in April 1980 and there were no Olympic selection trials, which were only due to be held after this in May 1980.