It's a wrap...but not quite

Andy Rice speaks to the recently retired President of ISAF Paul Henderson

Paul Henderson retired as president of ISAF last month, just a week before his 70th birthday. His was a colourful presidency, and like George W Bush, Henderson is the sort of character that you either love or hate. The plumber from Toronto knows why he was unpopular in some quarters of the sport, but he makes no apology for that. "I’ll say the same thing to your face as behind your back. In the world we now live in, that’s not that usual." He stands by his in-your-face approach to sports administration. "If I say something to your face, you have the right to debate it. We didn’t win all the arguments either. Some things we put on the table for the sake of a debate, not necessarily to win the point."

Henderson is proud of the progress ISAF has made under his tenure. "Everybody now knows who ISAF is," he says. "I don't thing we backed away from anything. You may not have agreed with everything we said or did, but at least you know where we stood."

Building communication between ISAF and the sailors was a big step, he says. Many member national authorities (MNAs) were unable to disseminate information from ISAF through to the sailors, but Henderson saw the internet as the answer to the sport’s administrative problems. These days that decision seems a no-brainer, but 10 years ago Henderson can be credited with some foresight in predicting the power of the net. Not everyone in ISAF agreed with his proposed technological revolution. "The Executive wouldn’t pay for it, so I paid for it myself out of my own pocket," he recalls. He brought in webmaster David McCreary from the US to set up the site and along with Bernie Steigmeyer from Switzerland, Henderson and his dynamic duo got sailing.org up and running.

It was one of many examples where if Henderson didn't like the way things were going, he’d take the bull by the horns and do it himself. "I guess that’s one time where you could say I railroaded it. The Internet meant ISAF could communicate directly with the sailors. We didn’t have to go through the layers of bureaucracy. Most of the MNAs and classes didn’t have the day-to-day resources to communicate with the sailors, and now they didn’t have to.!

One of the first things Henderson did was to put the Racing Rules up on the website. Again, it seems an obvious use of the technology, but it was controversial at the time. "US Sailing tried to sue us and we received some very, very tough legal letters from US sailing. They said that because Harold Vanderbilt started the racing rules, they owned the copyright." US Sailing was worried about losing a revenue stream, that of selling hard copies of the rule book. "But an interesting thing happened. Sale of the books went up."



Another change that seems obvious now but which caused some controversy at the time was the selection of the 49er as a new Olympic class at the ISAF annual meeting in 1996. With 10 incumbent classes expecting reselection for the 2000 Games in Sydney, Henderson crowbarred the 49er into consideration, saying that the 49er was definitely in, so which class was going to make way for it? The Star was ousted, only to be let back in a year or so later. But when I put it to Henderson that this was another example of him railroading a decision through the sometimes overly democratic process of ISAF meetings, he denies it. "I think I just stood up and made my case. You’ve got to remember I had only one vote out of 39 votes, but I suppose I made my case better than the people who didn’t want it."

Now that the 49er has been there for eight years, it seems an obvious choice. Some of the other Olympic classes have been there for more than a lifetime and could be said to be well past their sell-by date. Henderson was a President who always seemed prepared to challenge the status quo, so was he disappointed not to updated the ageing Olympic stable more than he did? "Even more radical boats would have been preferential," he admits, "but I think we came a reasonably long way."

As the third person ever to have set foot in a Laser, after fellow Canadians Bruce Kirby (the Laser’s designer) and Olympic medallist Hans Fogh, he has a natural affection for the boat. He rates the Laser as near perfect for the Olympics, which he believes should be a measure of talent rather than technology. So he was pleased with the switch from Europe to Laser Radial for the women’s singlehander. "The Europe is a better boat, but I think the Radial is a better choice for the smaller countries, and for the women’s singlehander there is a case to be made for boat that is out of the box."

There are certainly a couple of other changes he would liked to have pushed through. "I would love to have seen a simple catamaran," he says. "I was happy we changed the board - we had to do something there. In some ways I’m happy, in other ways I’m unhappy about that decision. I don’t think the Olympics should be used to rejuvenate an ailing part of the sport. Windsurfing has to prove after 2008 that it should stay. There are a lot of other things we could do with those places," says Henderson.

With the number of athletes strictly limited at the Games, every discipline has to justify its place on some level, and he believes windsurfing must get its house in order. "We could have an off-the-beach cat or match racing, for example. Windsurfing is hanging on by its fingernails, in a competitive sense. I think the constant pumping and the physical abuse that the sailors take is no fun anymore. They’ll go and wave jump, or kite surf, mountain bike, whatever. Why would they beat themselves up with all that pumping?"

Artificial propulsion in sailing – pumping, ooching, sculling – has been a hobby horse of Henderson’s. Where some argue that it is all part of the sport, Henderson has always been firmly opposed to this view and this is one of his primary objections to windsurfing in light to medium airs. "It’s air rowing - it’s not sailing. That’s why I like skiffs and cats because you’ve got to sail them. I’ve never been against pumping to shoot down a wave, but when the major propulsion is by pumping rather than the action of the wind, I can’t go for that. I don’t think they should have a windsurfing race in under 10 knots."

But while he questions the validity of windsurfing, he believes Olympic sailing generally is in very good health. "Sailing is most likely the most profitable sport in the Olympics. We don’t leave white elephants," he says, referring to the perennial problem that any host city must tackle - of developing multi-million dollar sporting arenas for a fortnight’s sport, but dealing with a financial headache that can endure for years after. "Sailing has one of the few venues that will pay for themselves in perpetuity. We may not make the greatest television but we sure don’t leave white elephants."

Henderson believes the sport is reaching a new maturity, where there will be a greater distinction between the professional and amateur aspects of the sport. "The game has changed, and it’s going more and more that way. You have regional activity from clubs to an area championship - the amateur scene - and then the world scene. You have the hired guns who are paid to sail with wealthy guys. They jump from one regatta to another, they have no class or crew loyalty or country loyalty - they just go to the highest bidder. It’s not a criticism, it’s just facing up to a new reality. And one of the problems is that the old guard won’t face up to that. They don’t realise what’s happening. But I believe that more and more classes and more and more regional events will be there only for the amateur. And I think that would be healthy.”

He is keen for a more distinct division to emerge between the two arenas. "Two things have to happen - we have to have a very solid pro-circuit, and if that happens then the amateurs will be able to get on much better with their racing. It would be a bit like golf - there will be events where the amateur can go and compete against the pro, but not the other way round. That’s by far the best model for us to follow."

Some argue that the top end of sailing is in a muddle, with a proliferation and hierarchy of events that make it hard for anyone in the sailing world, let alone anyone outside it, to understand. Henderson agrees...to an extent. "I think it’s one of the biggest challenges in the sport, to sort out the calendar. It’s difficult, but sailing is not a pyramid, it’s the Himalayan Mountains with many different peaks to climb. It’s not just the America’s Cup. The people in the Cup think they’re at the top of the pyramid but they’re not." Henderson says the America’s Cup is the closest the sport has to a ‘pro league’, but he would like to see a more formal pro league emerge, again along the lines of the professional golf circuit.

As the sport has become more professional and the financial stakes have escalated, there has been a corresponding rise in contractual disputes. This is a murky area that Henderson has been keen for ISAF to address. "One of the other things we did was, let’s say you’re a 49er sailor and you have a problem at a regatta with a race committee. In the past, a race committee could report you to your MNA, say the RYA, and as a sailor you had no right to appeal. Whatever the RYA decided was what ended up happening. Now, any sailor in the world that has their eligibility taken away from them has the right to appeal. We’ve had half a dozen cases like this in this year alone. We’ve got the problem with Coutts. We’ve been asked to get involved by Coutts. He believes that retroactively his rights to race have been taken away. My position is very clear, I don’t care who it is - whether at the top or the bottom level of the sport - any sailor that has his rights taken away has the right to due process."

Not surprisingly, Henderson would not be drawn on the specifics of the Coutts/Bertarelli case. "I don’t know who’s right or wrong, but my whole position is that you should have the right to appeal. I don’t what our review board is going to say. They might say Bertarelli has the right to do what he’s done. But at least Coutts has recourse to ISAF that wouldn’t have existed a few years ago, and he is the right to resort to the Court of Arbitration for Sport."

Henderson remains passionate about sailing and sport generally, and has not hung up his spurs quite yet. He is currently working as part of the IOC’s Evaluation Committee which is assessing the different city bids for the 2012 Olympics. That will keep him busy until mid-2005. Beyond that he has been offered a wide range of jobs in and around sport. "I’ve been asked to get involved in an America’s Cup challenge, to get involved in one of the major world sailing events, to build a rowing course in Toronto, and to work with a small club in Toronto that wants to redirect itself as a competitive sailing centre." Henderson won’t indicate which one most appeals, other than to comment that, "They’re all interesting."

He’s also looking forward to getting on doing some sailing rather than just talking about it. He currently owns a J/24 and two Ynglings (which his daughter campaigned and finished runner-up in the Canadian Olympic Trials), but he seems to be leaning towards the idea of a dinghy.

And what of his successor at ISAF, Goran Petersson? "He’s a very solid appointment, I think he will start out as a consensus-builder and delegator. That’s how I started out, but when you get to the point where people don’t do what you ask them to do, you just get on and do it yourself," says Henderson. "He’s not going to have the same challenges as we had. Financially ISAF is much more stable now. I don’t think he has many more dragons to slay."

As for the plumber, he says he will look back on his years at ISAF with fondness. "What a great experience, what a great ride. Not bad for a hick from Toronto!"

What do you think about Paul Henderson's ideas? What will he be best remembered for? Send us your views here