'Fancy' new scoring system

Paul Brotherton gives us his view of the final race series at the Rolex Miami OCR

So Olympic Sailing is going to be more interesting for TV in China as we have a fancy new double points, non discardable, last race, series decider, the thought being that this mechanism would keep everyone focussed and excited about the sailing until the last day: No confusion about discards as they are all done, no lack of appearance by the winner as they must sail in this last race.

The thought is well intentioned but for gods sake please someone grab those who come up with these 'great' ideas and ram some common sense down their throats.

Let's just take a wild leap in imagination and visualise this ISAF Grade 1 event to be the Olympics in China. The points are not made up they are factual and the following scenarios are all possible.

Tornado, Star and Yngling Classes: The last placed boat in the live TV spectacular, yes that’s right, dead last across the finish line takes the Gold Medal! What a spectacular performance there from the boat cruising home in last place laughing and performing a victory plod round the track.

49er and RS: X men, This would be a similar scenario where the leader and the second placed boat could finish last and second last and still win Gold and Silver, no matter what else happens.

470 women, Laser Radial and Laser: Last place finisher in the medal race gets the Gold or at worse the Silver.

That’s eight of the eleven Gold medals up for grabs that could just come over as a total farce. What is so difficult about explaining how our scoring works? It's like golf except you get to discard your worst race (hole) lowest score wins. It's not hard. There seems to be a total lack of inspiration about what makes sailing exciting to watch on TV.

Best selling sailing videos? 18ft Skiffs, Sydney Harbour. Ingredients: wind, incidents, swearing, aggro, amazing boats. It's great to know the scores but who cares, it looks awesome. Add to that the pressure of winning a medal on the last eventful gybe to the finish and you have a spectacular event. Instead of wasting time with this camel of a system which does nothing to simplify or clarify the points scoring system, surely someone within ISAF can see what makes sailing brilliant.

The venue is wrong, not the scoring - it’s a total smoke screen to get away from someone standing up and saying, “this is nonsense”. A sailing Olympics held at a venue where there is next to no wind and dense fog every other day will not be made exciting by the proposed, or for that matter, any other well-intentioned system. What we need is good venues that provide the correct ingredients, namely wind and preferably no fog. Yes it would be great if the women sailed a mini version of the 49er and the Star was banished forever, but that would pale to nothing if we could just sail in the right places at the right time of year.

ISAF are either culpable of rank amateurism or have a laissez-faire attitude beyond redemption to let the Beijing bid go so far without pushing the Chinese towards holding the sailing in Hong Kong. The Horsey lot have achieved it - the three day event will be staged in Hong Kong, not mainland China.

Dinghy sailing is just a great sport and with some gumption ISAF could ensure amazing images and spectacular sport. Sadly, over the course of their annual conference, rumoured to have cost in excess of one million pounds, ISAF only made one significant 'step forward' for Olympic sailing and produced the present scoring system that certainly doesn’t get me excited.

The three classes that do look to have some excitement are the 470 men, the RS:X Women and the Finn. But a quick look over the scoreboard would tell you that they would be exciting with or without this system.

We can only hope that we either get freak weather in 2008 or that the IOC can forgive sailing for putting on such a rank bad event. Then, hopefully Britain will get a chance to demonstrate how exciting small boat sailing can be.

Editor's comment: We agree 100% with Paul's views stated here in particular ISAF's hand in the appalling decision to hold the Olympic sailing in Qingdao. No change in scoring system or even the best possible television coverage will redeem the Olympic sailing event if it is held in a venue where there is a high possiblity of light winds or no wind. The only problem is that the 2008 sailing venue is now all but complete and the time has probably passed where anything can be done about moving venue. Roll on 2012.