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More on what the idea selection of Olympic class boats would be for 2012

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Thedailysail's editor James Boyd writes:

Following on from ISAF President Goran Petersson's announcement that sailing is to lose a class for the 2012 Olympics we (and the help of some well lubricated former Olympic sailors in Valencia on Friday night) have been having a deep philosophical ponder about what this all means...

Looking at this from a 'clean sheet of paper'/'blue sky' perspective - how does one decide what should best represent sailing in the Olympics? While at one stage the emphasis was based on the noble concept of Olympic sailing being 'depictive' of the different disciplines within our sport - within the confines of what is possible within a bay (offshore sailing is not particularly well represented at the Olympics!) - the focus now seems to be moving towards classes that are more visually exciting for media and spectators as well as for the competitors. Equally important criteria are that the class spread must also allow both men and women to compete and as many countries as possible - but does this need to be the case across all the classes?

The current line-up of Olympic disciplines for 2008 as we know is:

470 - men's two person dinghy
470 - women's two person dinghy
49er - skiff
Finn - open singlehanded dinghy
Laser - men's one person dinghy
Laser Radial - women's one person dinghy
RS-X - men's windsurfer
RS-X - women's windsurfer
Star - men's keelboat
Tornado - multihull
Yngling - Women's keelboat

So what would we suggest for 2012? Firstly a venue capable of delivering medium to strong breeze, which hopefully Portland Harbour and the waters off Weymouth will provide.

Class-wise:

Laser - men's one person dinghy
Laser Radial - women's one person dinghy
49er - skiff
Bladerider Moth - foiler
Hobie Tiger - multihull
RS-X - men's windsurfer
RS-X - women's windsurfer
29er XX - mixed dinghy
Laser SB3 - keelboat
Match race keelboat

Clearly to meet all the criteria above is almost impossible. Perhaps the ideal Olympic boat is the Laser or Laser Radial, because they are cheap, a tight one design, are sailed everywhere around the world and can be reasonably exciting to watch. A similar argument applies to the RS-X windsurfers but in the future beyond 2012 they need to farmed off to somewhere where they can find consistently good breeze - seeing a group of sailboarders pump their way around a course in light breeze does not make for great entertainment. Nonetheless, they stay as does the 49er which has had reasonably good take up internationally, is relatively cheap, a challenging boat to master and is spectacular to watch on the race course..

In contrast the Tornado, while highly exciting for spectators is perhaps too technical and expensive to race at a top level to be an Olympic class (something we grudgingly acknowledge). We would replace this with something like a Hobie Tiger F18, highly popular around the world, still relatively high performance and considerably less expensive than the Tornado.

The Finn we feel has too much cross over with the Laser - but if there is no Finn what what will the 'big' boys sail? The 470, while a great boat, is too old fashioned. Likewise the Star. And the Yngling? Don't get us started. Why on earth was this boat ever chosen? It's expensive, old fashioned, boring to watch and generally an insulting boat for women to be fobbed off with.

The Bladerider foiling Moth is a bit hopeful due to its lack of take-up internationally at this stage. However it would provide a superb boat to get viewers watching sailing, it is radical yet can be raced and is also a different discipline within sailing to other classes.

It would be great if someone did some analysis and came up with a boat men and women can compete in on an equal footing, or does this really only happen in singlehanded trans-oceanic racing? Perhaps this is worth a separate discussion altogether (email us here). Men and women racing equally against one another would be a great advertisement for our sport. If there is no such boat then we would suggest a class that is compulsorarily mixed (ie one man, one woman, per boat) and it would seem reasonable, if the 470 is on its way out, that its likely replacement, the 29erXX, be used for this purpose.

This neatly frees up a spot for a match racing boat. With the America's Cup and match racing events happening almost every week of year around the world, this is a discipline of the sport that should be represented. The question is in what boat? Here perhaps the same argument over why the America's Cup is sailed in heavy slow boats rather than maxZ86s or 60ft trimarans applies - the sport is all about close contact and aggressive tactics first and foremost rather than ultimate speed. So we need a non-hiking 20 something foot long keelboat with a relatively heavy displacement that looks the part and was designed in the 21st century. Any suggestions?

Again the replacement for the Star needs to be something created this century and with more performance, hence why we suggest the SB3 or an equivalent.

A problem we can foresee with this line-up is that it caters too much for Laser-sailor sizes competitors and not enough for grunty heavyweights. Another suggestion has been to have a 25ft version of the Figaro added as a singlehanded offshore class, racing the sailing equivalent of the marathon. Think night time pictures, on board cameras, etc.

Another idea is to get away from the standard courses and to design courses for whatever boats are best at. For example the Moth could race a mixture of speed courses as well as conventional races. Perhaps the same could be offered to the 49ers and the cats. A speed trial is something spectators would readily understand and would also make 'good television'.


Spanish Olympic sailing coach Lea Sitja writes:

Hi sailors,
I'd like to share my view of Olympic Sailing.

Whenever I read or listen to any one arguing which class should be dropped or stay in the Olympics all I can see are their own emotional feelings missing any rational and missing a bigger picture. To the point that some people dare to say which classes "deserve" to be Olympic and which not based on the class "heritage", how "purely" the boat sails or any other similar boring crap.

Understandably, we all feel more attached to our own particular class but we should forget those feelings and think what's best for the sport of sailing.

If you ask me, sailing shouldn't be an Olympic sport at all because then it would be more genuine and fun, but then It would be harder for me to get a job... Anyway, I'd like to share some of my thoughts in search for some enlightenment from you guys:

-Sailing is one of the lucky sports that people do because its fun. So certainly there is life, I mean sailing, besides the Olympics. Not like some other sports that exist merely because they are Olympic and so government money keeps them artificially alive. How lucky we are!!!!

- We are used to have many options, 1, in Sailing Olympic Classes that suit our sex/weight/age/money to try make it to the Olympics and we take them for granted. Like if we had many Basketball Olympic Classes for different body heights so that one could be for example 5´7 tall and train hard to make it in the team under 175 cm tall. We have to begin to accept that these many available options will be reduced in the future because they make no sense when the current trend is to accommodate more Olympic athletes from the poor countries while still reducing the overall number of Olympic athletes. Any Olympic class based purely on non-sense criteria that benefits rich countries, like the the colour of the eyes or in our case the sailors body weight, will die. It's a think of the past when empires and kings ruled the world. Lasers, being cheap and strictly one design, will stay because poor countries have an option to develop their own marginal national fleets under an Olympic Program but Finns and Stars will have to leave the Olympics at some point.

-The Olympic concept is based on competition between individual athletes, which I like, not between countries, which I don't like, whereas in Olympic Sailing sailors compete for their mother countries' flag although it's not a team competition. That's why we find many runners from the USA in the 100m finals but only one French 470 male boat in Athens '04. I think this is so because Olympic Sailing within the ISAF is way too European-British focused while I don't think the Olympic Committee in Lausanne shares the same vision of the world and specifically how the Olympic Games should be run. ISAF can make proposals and lobby to the Olympic Committee but at the end of the day the ones making decisions and setting general guidelines for the Olympic Games are not the ISAF. It would bring some light to the sailing community to know how much actual power ISAF holds on those decisions.

-If a sailing class disappears on its own once dropped off the Olympics it means that no one is interested on it anymore and that its contribution to the sailing community is over. Too sad but we have to accept it.

-Only sailors can follow a regatta on TV and the rest of the world just can't understand who is winning so only action, drama, crashes and flesh are of interest to the media. The classes that are spectacular to see on TV have more chances to stay in the Olympics.

-There's two groups of sailing boats; The old ones (slow, heavy, non planning, old design and fun to race) and the modern ones (fast, light, planning/foiling, modern design and fun to race and very fun to sail). Only the modern ones are TV attractive for non sailors.

Summarizing, I believe in the future Olympic Sailing will have less classes, it will be a TV appealing sport (windsurfing, 49er-29er, Tornado....) and with some affordable popular classes (Lasers, windsurfing...)


Reader Phil Lawrence is more succinct:

Try this list for size:
Board - Men
Board - Ladies
Match Racing - Men (3 crew) – Event supplied boats
Match Racing - Ladies (3 crew) – Event supplied boats
Laser - Men
Laser Radial - Ladies
49er - Men
Skiff -29er or similar - Ladies
Catamaran –Something less exotic than the Tornado - Open
Plus either:
470 – Open
Star – Men

I think that addresses most of the current issues around looking good on TV, having finals, easier access for poorer nations, more ladies, range of crew weights etc…..


From Long Beach, CA Dave Beck writes:

Actually they should drop TWO classes. Both the Finn and 470 are antiquated designs that do not reflect the current state of high performance and highly skilled sailing. Dropping both would suit me fine. One class could then be replaced with the foiled Moth that Rohan Veal is promoting. I also would prefer to see the 29erXX replace the Yingling for the women's crewed event.


Professor Stephen Heppell writes:

I guess the medal number reduction was inevitable - and with a big Olympic emphasis rightly on inclusion (ie more representation from less wealthy countries) and rightly on gender balance it isn't hard to imagine the changes that will result. For example, since the Finn is - rather oddly - the open class it hasn't done very well at drawing women into the sport has it? And the keel boats are jolly expensive.

However it always seems a huge shame to me that the scheduling prevents sailors from going for more than one medal. This would be good for under-funded countries - one sailor is cheaper than two, but also it would allow multi-medal stars to emerge which the sport needs. It seemed extraordinary that in the last Olympics Shirley Robertson was the first ever GBR woman to hit two golds in consecutive games - an amazing achievement by her and her teams, and yet two golds in two very similar races in one Olympics (Kelly Holmes) grapbbed all the media attention (and Kelly became a Dame).

Sailing needs high profile heroes and a little bit of re-scheduling could make a big difference. Is it possible in these class-specialist days to win in two classes at once? Well, it depends on the classes doesn't it - a male and a mixed fleet, same boats, would be possible for example, or in keelboats fleet and separate match race events... ISAF want to limit the number of sailors, rescheduling would retain big fleets and big spectacles and maybe give us big stars too.

Kenneth Wilson writes:

With respect to Cathy Foster being the only ever woman in an Open class, did Paul Elvstrom not sail with his daughter in the Tornado in 1988? In terms of which classes to keep or lose, I'd rather not lose any of them. I think the spread of classes we have now covers most of the bases. If pushed I would probably have to remove the keelboats and bring in a womens skiff...

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