Cat chat

Readers provide their feedback on the RYA-catamaran issue

We have been receiving much heart-felt feedback about the RYA's anti-catamaran submissions to ISAF. If you have not yet read our article on the issue it can be found here. NB: We will be updating this article when more feedback comes in.

If you wish to join the debate please email your views to us here .

Chris Webber joins the debate:

A couple of points in response to your interesting piece on cats potentially being dropped from the Youth Worlds and the Olympics. First, neither event has ever, or could hope to, represent all the various forms of competitive sailing. Lots of disciplines are not represented: team racing, match racing, any form of sailing with more than three people on the boat, non-trapeze double-handers, trapeze singlehanders, and the list goes on. There's no reason why cats deserve a place amongst the events as of right when these disciplines don't.

Second, I don't know the statistics, but my impression is that cat racing lacks the numbers of sailors that other Olympic and youth disciplines can boast, a few big class events notwithstanding (this might be said to be because multihull sailors are spread between far fewer classes than monohull sailors). Certainly at youth level competitor numbers are very low. Britain's history of Olympic hopefuls in the Tornado has been almost entirely one of competitors failing to make the games in monohull classes and switching over to the Tornado for an easier shot at going to the Games. I'm not sure the Olympics should include a discipline for second rate sailors from other classes (although I suspect some other nations may take cat sailing more seriously than us Brits).

That said, some of the other Olympic classes have been anachronistic to say the least for a number of years. The co-existence of the Finn and the Laser is just absurd, and the Star is as bad an advert for our sport as any boat I can think of. And while we're talking about poor quality fleets in classes, the Yngling has to get a big mention.

Moreover, the RYA once again emerge with no credit whatsoever for the high-handed, autocratic way in which they administer the sport in this country. The total absence of a consultation with people connected with the Olympic and youth worlds programme, let alone the wider sailing community, comes across very badly. But then the RYA seems now to see its role as the collecting of Olympic medals at the expense of paying any attention to the dwindling state of the sport at grass roots level (as evidenced by falling numbers in most major UK dinghy sailing championships). Cynically, I tend to agree with the suggestion that the marginalising of cat sailing at elite level is a reflection of Britain's awful track record in the cat class at the Olympics and is done with the medal haul in mind.

Anyway, just a few thoughts from my point of view. Keep up the good work with the website, my working day would be much more boring without it!

Richard Morris has this to say:

The overal feeling I felt at seeing the RYA list was one of disappointment, but not necessarily at seeing the Tornado, Finn, Star or Yngling fail to get a mention. What a failure to express the diverse range of events and styles that sailing covers.

Accepting that we’re down to ten events, what are the priorities? The IOC agenda seems simple. Participation and attractiveness to the main TV markets. Sailing has a problem there all right. For the ISAF, and the RYA and the other national bodies, the question is funding - not just from the IOC but the National Lottery – and exposure for the sport. For the sailors? As well as the chance to compete at the highest level the Olympics present the gateway to a professional career as a sailor.

Coverage of sailing in the US is dominated by keal boat sailing. There’s a hint there. In Europe the media dependant professional arm of our sport is most vibrant in disciplines with an adventure element. Perversely the most media friendly sailing stories have turned out to be those that take place miles away from a small triangle on which you hope to cram a dozen or so camera boats.

The highest profile sailors in our sport are American and Europeans (and Ozzies or Kiwis) and yet there’s little or no opportunity for them to compete.
As a spectacle what do the Olympic classes provide at the moment? They’re all white hulled, while sailed dinghies sailing identical style courses.

So is there a place in all that for catamaran sailing? You bet there is. But it’s not for a Tornado banging it’s way around an Olympic course. It’s for the kind of event that cat’s excel. One that would bring adventure as well as sporting excellence. There should be an open (or specifically mixed men & women) multi stage/day raid sailed in one design cats.

What else is missing? Match racing. The organizers supply the boats, which are usually detuned, so the cost of participation is reduced. The boats are bigger and require more team work – an attractive part of sailing that almost purely neglected at Olympic level at the moment – but you need fewer of them and the cranes and cradles and large hard standing areas are gone. The ‘names’ have a discipline to compete in and keal boat sailing is represented by something more representative of the kind of boat the average sailor takes out on the weekend.

The disciplines already picked give the purist their demands and cover the weight ranges. Lets see something a little more imaginative for the last two events.

Phillip Lawrence says:

Relax guys – Catamarans won’t be dropped from the Olympics (but don’t count on it still being in Tornados though, but that’s next years argument)

Having had a look at all the submissions on the ISAF website (My god, how long do those meeting last?) I can only find the RYA ‘s effort with no catamarans and that doesn’t actually propose to drop cats it just leaves them competing for the remaining 2 slots

I think there are 3 strands to this debate

1) This clearly hasn’t been a masterclass in public relations by the RYA and to be fair Rod Carr has put his hands up and admitted they should have handled it more openly

2) There is clear logic to the RYA’s proposal on the dropping the youth cat from the ISAF youth worlds: A talented young sailor with all the skills acquired from sailing a technical boat like a 420 or a high performance 29er can still become an excellent adult catamaran sailor. Also you can’t beat the market - The recognised junior and youth classes racked up well over 1,000 entries in their UK National championships this year. The Hobie Dragoon managed just 7 and the Hobie 16 (which can be handful for youngsters) just 15. The parents who pay for youth sailing choose carefully where to spend their money.

3) A high performance cat clearly ticks all the boxes for an Olympic boat which is why I think it will stay in the Games. But the reality is that something has to go. Interestingly there seems to be a big push in the ISAF submissions for womens match racing to be included presumably in/or instead of the Yngling. So that leaves the Finn & Star looking vulnerable, but one of those will have stay or Olympic mens sailing will become a sport for lightweights.

Anyway what happened to your Olympic foiling moth campaign? Now that would really be something!

Will Howden, Team GBR's Tornado representative for Beijing joins the debate:

Having just been nominated to represent GBR at the 2008 Olympics in the Tornado, I have more to lose than most, regarding the recent decision of the RYA not to put the class forward for the 2012 Olympics, not least my job!

As I see it the two arguments as to the Youth Class and the Olympic class are different, and I have no real background knowledge on the youth program as I was not part of it. All I do know is that currently no one has come out of the UK youth cat program and gone on to be an Olympic medal contender in the Tornado, or for that matter finish in the top 10 at a Worlds!

It should be said that ISAF’s decision making is ass about face at the Council meeting, deciding on the Youth Disciplines first then the Olympic disciplines. It would surely make sense the Youth disciplines reflected the Olympic ones!

The initial selection in November is firstly the allocation of how the disciplines will be split. By this I mean six men's and four women's classes. This may change to 5 and 5 split but seems very unlikely at this stage as ISAF is easily meeting the men’s/women’s percentage criteria set by the IOC. If this does happen then the Multi hull is really struggling for a spot! They will then select the disciplines, so men's skiff, multihull etc, class and cost are not the object of this discussion. To dissipate any theories on this the equipment cost of running a campaign is only about 30% for the Tornado! The top three at this years Worlds were on standard boats with off the shelf sails!

Secondly, this is the RYA's submission, this is only one out of 60 or so from all the other National sailing Authorities, this means they only have one vote on the council to decide the disciplines, as said they have not put in anything for the men’s keel boat of heavy weight single hander as well. So they have left two spots open, all men’s classes, where the Multihull fits ISAF’s Olympic Classes criteria better than any of the others!

So lastly you have to look at the requirement to which ISAF want their Olympic boats to be, they have introduced the medal race to increase public awareness and allow close inshore racing for the public and media. They want boats that looks good, that are fast and exciting etc etc, plus if you read the RYA’s reasons we can break these down to support the multihull.

Reason:

1. The events listed above provide a natural progression for sailors.

The Tornado is a technical class, but can be won by talented sailors using standard equipment!

2. The high performance dinghies & windsurfing provide exciting high speed racing
that attracts media interest and delivers entertainment for the consumer.

What is more exciting than a multihull flying a hull close to the shore racing at speeds of 25 knots, to back this up why do the Extreme 40s work so well and why are Russell Coutts and Paul Cayard racing their “World Sailing League” on multihulls?

3. Windsurfing & the one person dinghies provide an opportunity to have high
numbers of countries participating and can be sailed in supplied equipment.

Not possible for the Tornado, but possible for another multihull!

4. The two person dinghy classes represent a major percentage of the dinghy
activity taking place throughout the world.

Multihull sailors account for 25% of the active sail racers across the globe!

5. The events listed provide equal opportunity for men & women.

Multihulls can be raced by mixed teams, as is currently the case. Taking this further why not have the women’s high performance boat a multi hull?

6. The symmetry of the events make the sport easier to understand for the public.

People can understand Multi hull racing easier, the public can understand speed better than wind shifts, tide etc.

Taking these arguments on a little further, nearly all Olympic classes mould people into one shape, Laser 78-80kg, Finn 95kg plus, 470 helm 56-58kg, 470 crew 68-70kg, RSX men 76kg etc etc. With multihulls the weight differences can be carried much better, currently in the Tornado we have people sailing at 90kg and some at 55kg all competitive and all wining races! Cost is not an issue as a competitive multihull will last 3-4 years a 470, 1 year, plus is half the cost of a Yngling or Star, main campaign cost are travel, hotels, food, containers, coaches etc. This will only get more expensive with the introduction of the 'ISAF World Cup'!

So not only are multihulls fast, exciting, media friendly. It allows different sailing weights hence different genders to be competitive. All in all I think multihulls have a pretty good argument. The fact the RYA have not stuck their neck out to support this is disappointing, but from my talks with them they put the multihull above the other disciplines that were not on the list!

Veteran Tornado sailor Mitch Booth writes:

Hi at The Daily Sail,

Naturally I´m concerned about multihull being tossed out of the Olympics, but this is a political decision that all the MNAs will debate and vote on. My comment is more directed to the misinformed view that the Tornado is very expensive and the cost has got out of control. To put things into perspective: A new Tornado costs around 34,000 Euro. They are built to a very high standard using pre preg epoxy and last for many many years, even at Olympic level you could race a five year old boat and still be competitive. After 5 years the boat could still be worth 24 000 Euro which is only 2 000 a year depreciation. Of course there are sails and maintainence costs but when you compare to all the other Olympic classes that are contructed from Polyester and need replacing in some cases a few times each year and have very little resale value then the Tornado is actually one of the cheapest Olympic classes to campaign.

Theres gotta be a multihull in 2012, I heard it could blow there....!

John Ready writes:

36-48 hours and 730 signatures with some really big names..... Watch out for
Ellens....This has momentum... do the RYA realise whats afoot?

Ross Hobson sends this:

This is typical of RYA - they have consistently tried to get rid of cats/multihulls:
Firing their most successful coach a number of years ago, reducing the cat/Hobie squad to 2, how can any crew expect to train with such small numbers?

Yet the Hobie crews have repeatedly won the ISAF world champs - in comparison the amount of money/time effort put into Lasers for poorer results

From China Alistair Skinner writes:

As far as the Olympics are concerned there is one priority – the dollar!

They are an expensive extravaganza to stage. For example the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Venue - for just 11 events cost around a quarter of a billion dollars (US) to build.

Sports are always being included, or dropped, from the Olympics according to their popularity, not their popularity with the general amateur competitor however, but the large television networks whose payments for the television rights are a large part of Olympic funding, and if you have any doubts how powerful these media moguls are just ask yourself why the Beijing swimming finals are scheduled for so early in the morning (which just happens to be prime time TV on the other side of the world in the US).

Olympic Sailing is already facing a challenge in this area as the Qingdao venue is hardly likely to provide hours of footage of boats ‘zipping’ about on the water and the TV producer’s worst nightmare of an unfilled slot or just images of bobbing boats is hardly going to endear our sport to them.

Then on top of all this various bodies want to remove the most natural conduit into high end, high speed sailing (Catamarans at the Youth Worlds) and then from what I understand NOT support the continuation of a catamaran in the Olympics does not strike me as very clever at all, certainly from a fiscal point of view, never mind the sporting spectacle.

Have our friends down Ensign Way in Hamble forgotten that a significant part of ISAF’s operating revenue comes from the Olympic Games?

If for whatever reason sailing ceases to be an Olympic Sport then those funds will have to be replaced, presumably at least partly, from a lift in the membership costs of the member nations (individuals cannot be a member of ISAF). If you go to the ISAF website you can see a breakdown of what the current contributions are and it is ‘not a lot’ so much of the funding must surely come from other sources like the Olympics.

I am not a winging expat complaining from a distance. I have maintained my membership of the RYA and a keen worker towards the development of our sport here in China.

Weymouth is already likely to be under pressure to ‘perform’ for our sport and the removal, or certainly the lack of support for, of the fastest, and therefore in the public’s (TV couch potato viewer’s) eye the most exciting and therefore viewer figure producing class in the Games will not help at all.

The money men will look at the bottom line and we should remember that no sport has a god given right for perpetual Olympic inclusion.

Come on RYA, think about these decisions a bit more, the impact could well be on more than just a few cat sailors.

From the USA Donald Lawson writes:

Well, that makes two major English speaking countries (the other, the USA) that are trying yo get rid of the catamarans. Reality is most older people do not like beach cats. I have raced tris and cats most of my teen and now early twenties and it amazing how many yacht clubs, or older race directors hate to mention when set new course records nor bring enough trophies for the multihull classes. The amount of disrespect for multihulls even by professional sailors is amazing. I read articles from different pros over there and I hear them disrespecting the boats they became famous onboard. Like ORMAs, I admit to were costly, but so are there new IMOCAs and Record boats, and Maxi multihulls. Not only did certain French sailors not support there own countrymen, but some famous British sailors who said they would race ORMAs did not come through.

Whats happening now is these older multihull haters are affecting the next 50 years right now. No youth multihulls and no Olympic multihulls would almost kill off the Tornado, which is what they want. One thing they are also wrong about is the lack of youth in the Tornado class. There is a large number of young (16-25) sailors racing Tornados. But remember, the worlds best get to go to the Olympics. You will have to fight your way in. That builds up the skills of the younger sailors because that allows them to learn tricks and skills from veterans. As with any sport there will be stars that stay for years (golf, tennis, basketball, baseball, soccer, etc) and the new players will learn how to beat them over time. That is the beauty of sports to know once you are in the sport you got to get better and catch the old guys before someone new comes in and catches you. What other class can you say that about?

John Reekie sends this:

No
It is the job of the RYA to promote both all forms of sailing and high level racing. If people want to sail a catamaran then they can go to any sailing centre and learn to sail one just as someone who wants to sail any other minority dinghy. The best racing is in one design classes like the Optimist, Topper, Laser, 420 and 29er which lead onto their respective olympic classes. The RYA are bang on with this as after all it is high class racing their youth regimes and training are fostering. It is the underlying jobs of sailing clubs to teach people how to sail at a basic level and this is done as they require members to survive.

Chris Harrison writes:

Firstly, I can't see why it should be necessary to reduce the number of classes at all and who is it that is making these crazy decisions and why ?

To me it is important that Olympic sailing represents the actual sailing that happens worldwide so people can relate to it. It is also crucial that there is close tactical and physical racing, which is what sailing is really all about.

In certain classes the mens and womens could be combined as they can race together on equal terms.

I would drop the Mens Laser, make the Radial class a single class open to both Women and lightweight Men (men and women already compete equally by choice in Radial fleet racing) - the heavier Men can then move up to the Finn or a similar replacement one design.

I would drop the Star and Yinling (neither of which have any place in normal sailing and are far too development orientated) and replace them with a single one-design keelboat class, possibly Laser SB3's ? Maybe crew could be 4 women or 3 men to give same max weight ?

The high performance womens boat is important and the RS800 proto looks good, but not sure that there is room for both this and the womens 470?

Cat sailing should definitely stay but maybe in something more one-design and thus less expensive than the development Tornado, which is very elitist - not sure what though ? Maybe a one design F18.

Finally, how did anybody from sailing ever agree to the 'Medal Race' format? In my view this is a total joke ! In my view the skill of sailing is to perform consistently over a period of time and across a range of conditions - not to reward a one-off fluke by deciding the medals on that basis.

The fact is that even with all these changes the general public are never going to understand sailing and even if they did it would still not get shown on TV before midnight ! - The last Olympics clearly proved that when despite Team GBR's medal success coverage was appalling and far more prime time was given to swimming despite us winning no medals at all !

The one thing that could help the public is GPS tracking but for some reason this still seems a way off - although it should be very simple as the technology is very basic indeed. At Weymouth last week there was a high profile for the TRAXU gps tracking team but I never saw any results from this, which was a shame. Without this even the experts on the water giving the commentary were unable to judge the laylines and assess who was actually leading - resulting in some long silences whilst they waited tack crosses /mark roundings !

Highly respected sailing commentator (and himself a former cat sailor) Bob Fisher writes in to say that:

Yes. There is a place for catamarans at the Olympic regatta. Multihulls are more readily accepted now than they were in 1972, when the Tornado was given the nod for the Montreal Olympics. The spread of the catamaran as a fun boat, together with the increased talent that is required to produce top performance, would both point to a requirement for a catamaran at the Olympics.

After all the work the (then) IYRU Multihull Committee did to ensure the place of catamarans, it would be a massive volte-face to eliminate them from the Games.


J/24 guru Chris McLaughlin writes:

What a classic corporate move. We don’t win medals in the cat classes so let’s get rid of them.

Far better to get rid of the dull delusion that the Yngling does anything for women’s sailing, that the Finn is the telegenic equivalent of watching paint dry and that the Star is anything other than a rest home for retired Finnish painters…

Speed, crash and burn are all that matter to TV and the 49er and cats should offer this.

But then, even with the fastest boats in the World, if it doesn’t blow in Beijing and Weymouth and if our sailors don’t start shagging soap stars and getting more general media coverage, then sailing is headed for the Olympic scrap heap.

We will get on the phone to some Olympic sailors and Barbara Windsor and see what we can arrange Chris!

Mike Arstall sends this:

If Olympic sport is about excellence and pushing the envelope, then surely cat sailing like skiff sailing does just that. From a spectator view point you only have to look at the huge interest shown in the Oops Cup, and Extreme 40 events held in confined waters where spectators can watch to realise that the cats generate far more interest and excitement in the general public than a bunch of 420s milling around a pond! Just think of the following for F1 and Sports Car racing or rallying, and consider how many people would tune in or turn up to watch standard 1.6 Ford Mondeo's trundling around a circuit.

So if any fleet is dropped from the Olympics, it ought to be the ordinary two man dinghy class, as it is dull to watch for the initiated and isn't where most of the youngsters who have graduated from slow beginner boats want to go when they are big boys and girls. (We are all boys and girls at heart it is only the size of the toy that changes! )

For Youth sailing the argument is less clear, and there is a case if entries are limited to cover a wide range of boats that caters for all levels. However when you consider that any youth entry to the Youth Worlds is no beginner and is actually simply a younger highly accomplished sailor, then the case for continuing in slow unexciting boats like 420s is less clear, and perhaps the 29er is where they want to be. Small performance boats like the 29er present an excellent stepping stone to the bigger more powerful dinghies that are the natural progression for any competitive sailor. If this is accepted then it is logical to introduce younger sailors to the fun and challenge of cat sailing also and make them part of the Youth Worlds so they can progress to Olympic cat sailing.

The big issue in the UK is lack of funding and promotion of cats at a junior level in contrast to France where they appear to have more cats than anything else in their sailing schools. Likewise the RYA is really biased towards traditional dinghies, possibly because the management comes from that era? Or because they haven't realised that the modern trend in most sport is for more challenge and more excitement which for sailors is provided by cats and skiffs.

I don't think we in the UK have moved with the times, but the signs are there of the manufacturers recognising the huge interest in cats and at dinghy shows now you see more and more low cost one design cats that are terrific fun and capture the imagination of the youngsters and the not so young. So surely we should be moving with this wave and not going backwards!

Regarding the Tornado, that is a great machine but I do feel the cost has got out of hand, and that in order to make it more popular it has to be less exotic and expensive. Either a standard cheaper Tornado should be promoted or a new lower cost one design cat should be selected, but for sure there must be cat sailing in the Olympics of some kind.

The UK Olympic Sailing Organisation ought in my book to seek funding to provide fleets of standard boats of all categories and encourage our good sailors to come and try them and then support our chosen team with new boats and sails so that Olympic excellence is less a question of how much money you have or what sponsorship you can raise but rather how good a sailor you are. If we can raise millions for an America's cup campaign and find sponsors like Pindar and BT and Ecover to support some of our top big boat sailors, I am sure we could attract commercial sponsorship for our Youth and Olympic Fleets as the publicity would be terrific. If you think that this is the ugly head of commercialism, it should be recognised that many of the top sailors in every fleet are actually paid professionals who work in the industry and get helped to sail, and the parents of many of our top sailors have sponsored their kids to sail and travel, so why not a commercial sponsor? The RYA can still manage the sailing side but they would then simply have more facilities.

Perhaps an added benefit of making Youth and Olympic sailing more exciting and visible would be to get more public recognition of the huge contribution British sailing has made to our haul of medals over recent years. Sailing is probably Britain's must successful Olympic sport and yet it gets the least coverage and public interest and we have to ask ourselves why and what to do about it? I don't believe that promoting 420 sailing over cat sailing is where it is at.

Presumably Mike means sponsorship in addition to the sponsorship deals the RYA has already with the likes of Skandia, accenture, Alfred McAlpine, Group 4 Securicor, Gul, etc to cover their Olympic sailing...

It is also worth pointing out that at the ISAF meeting in November no Olympic classes will be picked but rather Olympic events will be selected (with the classes being chosen in November 2008). With this in mind the cost of the Tornado (although an important and interesting point) is not yet relevant. The current concern is that the RYA is looking to remove the multihull event from the Olympic Games.

And, if it needs reiterating, the fact that Team GBR's sailing team has been so hugely successful in recent Olympics can largely be attributed to the RYA and their vision, hard graft and sterling management.

William Tucker:

I have a lot of sympathy with what the RYA on this subject. We have to lose at least one class so someone somewhere will get upset. At youth level and the transition to the Olympics the take up of cat sailing in this country at least makes the case the RYA makes fairly unanswerable.

At Olympic level we have a great problem as our sport is actually far wider than the number of available medals can cater for. Accordingly we have to look at our sport and decide what is good and works and then decide whether the Olympic arena is indeed the right arena for that particular discipline. My take on it is as follows:

-Olympic sailing should be for all mankind, be exciting (obviously so), and not overtly elitist (ie too expensive)
This means we should have the possibility of all sizes of men and women competing.
This means that given average conditions we should see excitement and athleticism.
This means culling ultra expensive boats from the Olympics
There should be as much equality between the genders as it is possible to make.

Olympic status for a class, or the lack of it, isn't the be all and end all of sailors having fun. The Star for instance doesn't need the Olympics for huge turnouts at their major events. Cat sailors have a flourishing F18 circuit (so much so it is even professional at the top end) without it having Olympic status. Arguably Olympic status would start to kill the F18s off.

For classes it seems therefore virtually unanswerable that there must be men & womens, single handers, and skiffs (high performance in some of the jargon). Beyond that we run into trouble. Loose the Finn and the only refuge of the bigger man is the Star. The Star itself is expensive, needs expensive facilities, and doesn't have obvious excitement, spinnaker or colour. The 470 whilst in a virtually unchallenged position in doublehanders isn't actually the only doublehander there as the skiffs also come double handed and could thereby kill two birds with one stone. The Yngling suffers in the same way as the Star - even if it does have a spinnaker it misses out on all else save for female glamour. Someone may be able to put me right here but I'm not sure even the Yngling is a safe bet for the larger girl either so I don't know what to do for them. Windsurfers tick most of the boxes but in reality when do windsurfers ever sail around Olympic type courses save for this one competition - everything else they do fits fun/lifestyle events better, besides which they are dull as dishwater in anything less than a F4 and that applies for the sailors as well. Where are you guaranteeing suitable conditions for them? Tornados have potential but expense kicks in and I'm not sure the sailors particularly enjoy them - by comparison to the F18 which seems genuinely fun and attract Tornado sailors when they actually want to go and have fun.

Looking inwards in these Islands, we have had a succession of top cat talent at the youth worlds but that talent only ever seems to run to one or two boats. As the RYA have said they then seem to go missing from international Olympic sailing for some considerable period of time and I'm not sure we have had any serious top level contention since the White dynasty. Good yes, world beaters - no.

Personally I see little alternative to the RYA position. I think they should consult on the two classes they have not decided upon yet and then put the case for whatever two classes they believe should be supported. At present I would support the Finn for the bigger man and a similar boat for women (Zoom or so? displaying my ignorance here!) Gender symmetry is important in the balance. Being singlehanded that also allows for more boats given that total athlete numbers are also restricted and it also means that both genders have two singlehanders and two double handers. Another key IOC is attempting to achieve is in keeping costs down, both in equipment and infra structure terms (as to the argument that Paralympic sailing needs such infra structure the answer lies in checking out the classes used to find ones that don't need it). Unfortunately it would also mean that there is no place for cats in the Olympics. Whilst not great lets be realistic about the number of cat sailors involved in Olympic sailing in this country in any event. Lets also remember that the current vibrancy of cat sailing is not related to Olympic sailing in any event. The F18s have a great circuit and I enjoy following their results even if I have never enjoyed cat sailing myself.

The bottom line is that our sport is bigger than the Olympics and any part of its exclusion from the games only seems to leave that bit better off. You could argue that leaving the Flying Dutchman out was detrimental to the class but the truth seems to be that the class had allowed costs to spiral out of control to the extent that it was only sailed by Olympic sailors. It has taken time but there is now a flourishing FD class again precisely because it left the Olympic circus behind. Cat sailing is here to stay but I'm unconvinced at present that with the constraints the IOC has imposed, the Olympics is its proper place. Look at the Ronde van Texel, the F18s, the Hobie circuit - it's all going on well there irrespective of Olympic status or even Youth Worlds status.

William makes a number of solid points and the area of Olympic selection is always going to be a tricky one fraught with conflicting decisions and views. We take the opinion simply that ISAF have stated they want the Olympics to deliver in two separate, specific areas. Firstly what they call type 1 events which must increase nation participation (cheap and readily available) the Men’s singlehanded dinghy (Laser), Women’s Singlehanded Dinghy (Radial) and windsurfers (RS:X) are the clear examples of this. Secondly there are type 2 events which must generate media buzz and appeal to the public. We feel along with the Men’s High Performance Doublehanded Dinghy (49er) and the Women’s High Performance Doublehanded Dinghy (whatever that may be if it is selected) and multihulls are the clear example of fast exciting sailing. By these ISAF criteria surely all the mentioned events should be the first to stay in.

If you wish to join the debate please email your views to us here