The least imperfect system?

We speak to ISAF Secretary General, Jerome Pels ahead of this weekends Mid-Year Meeting

This weekend will see the ISAF Mid-Year Meeting taking place in Qingdao, China. On the schedule for discussion is of course the controversial selection of events for the 2012 Olympic Games and in particular whether the catamaran is gone for good. Having put the case (as well as sided with) the injured party, we felt it time to get the view of the ISAF and so turned to their recently appointed Secretary General – Jerome Pels to talk about the likelihood of the decisions being overturned.

ISAF have come under a great deal of criticism over their vote to remove the Multihull event from the Olympic Games and to select Women’s Match Racing over a Women’s High Performance Two Person Dinghy, but Pels – who it should be noted heads the ISAF executive and does not vote at Council meetings - is at pains to point out it is a very easy one to defend. “For me this decision is difficult for ISAF, but from the point of view of working for ISAF it is straight forward,” he explains. “I support any decisions made by the Council and I will defend them, I think a lot of people do not understand that.” In spite of this Pels agrees the system currently used to select classes for the Olympic Games has its flaws. “It is not a perfect system but perhaps the system we have is the least imperfect,” he muses.

As has been the ISAF position since this decision was made back in November last year, Pels explains there was always going to be controversy as one class needed to be removed from the Games line-up. He adds that although there has been a great deal of criticism about the removal of the multihull there have been few constructive suggestions as to what might be removed instead if it were to be re-instated. “It is always the people on the wrong side of the choice that have an argument but the system is a democracy. There have been local elections [in the UK] and the Conservatives came out on top. Should Labour supporters and the Government say this is the wrong decision and get it overturned? It is the same situation with the Multihull and you should respect that.”



Inevitably ISAF, as the governing body of the sport, has taken the majority of the flack from those feeling aggrieved by the decision. However, it is not only those affected by this who feel the present system does not work properly. In truth there has been some significant ill feeling towards the Federation for some while now from sailors feeling that their voice is not being heard within the governing body.

In an attempt to rectify this, in recent years a new group has been formed in the shape of the ISAF Athletes’ Commission. This is certainly a good step, with the commission being made up of current Olympic sailors. Surely, though, if this commission is to be seen as a true sailors’ voice it should have a strong representation sitting on the ISAF Council when big decisions are made such as the selection of Olympic Events? Pels argues this should definitely not be the case and that sailors are already represented. “Everybody says [they represent the sailors]. The national authorities represent the sailors, the class associations represent the sailors, the coaches committee represents the sailors,” he comments. He adds that to ask the athletes commission to take a position in favour of one particular class and against another is totally unfair when the athletes themselves and their friends are so heavily involved in the classes being discussed.

In fact while representatives of the Member National Authorities (MNAs) may claim to represent the sailors, this is only a part truth. MNAs tend to have additional agendas over and above simply putting the case of their sailors, the most influential most certainly being which sailors they have on their roster that are likely to medal.

The problem with the present systems lies not in the Athlete’s commission, just that for most sailors, the distance between them and their MNA representative seems way too great and as a result they feel alienated. For example do you know who is the MNA representive for the UK? A flick through the ISAF website indicates to be one Chris Atkins, but with due respect – who on earth is Chris Atkins?

In fact if one looks at the complete list of ISAF Council members we struggle to identify a significant proportion of them while on their website there is little to find out about them beyond their names - again this does little to help the image of a group of faceless bureaucrats making grand decisions with little knowledge of the sport in the modern era.

Jerome Pels acknowledges that this is the sort of information that should be available to the public in the future to help understand who the Council are. However, he goes on to add that the best Council member is not always the person with the most in depth knowledge of Olympic sailing. “People might not know the Council members, but they are very well informed,” he explains. “It can be difficult for them to know everything because they do meetings that are perhaps two and a half days long and they need to decide on everything from changes in class rules and racing rules, so they need assistance as well. If you look at the RYA council member there will be Rod Carr, John Derbyshire and Sparky [Stephen Park] sitting behind them giving advice on specific areas. As a representative on the Council you do not need to know everything. In fact it is sometimes better not to as they need to listen and not be pre-occupied with their own ideas and views.”

Perhaps then it is possible to understand the ISAF Council members need not be the best sailors in the world. However, we maintain it should still be easier to find out about them. Herein lies a significant issue within the ISAF, one of communication. It could well be argued the furore over the multihull’s exclusion from the Games would have been reduced if the ISAF had communicated better with the sailing community as a whole regarding the selection procedure and voting process.

Pels is well aware of this. He provides a very telling anecdote: “In Qingdao, I was sitting – we did a lot of sitting and waiting in Qingdao – chatting to Jonas [Hoegh-Christensen] the top Danish Finn sailor. He looked at my shirt and said ‘ah you are from ISAF, you have got to listen to the sailors more about the events’. I said these things are all discussed in the Events Committee and there are members of that who are sailors and there are even some Danish members that he might know. As it turned out, the Danish guy on the events committee is a member of the same club as Jonas and lives on the same street. I said ‘well go and talk to him.’”


Above: RS800 one candidate for the Women's High Performance Two Person Dinghy.

Pels was using the above anecdote to illustrate there are good people making decisions on the various ISAF committees but many sailors tend to complain without sufficient knowledge of the workings or make-up of the committee. However, it also illustrates a point that ISAF still seem to struggle with. Simply, as the governing body of our sport it is their job to ensure people are well enough informed about who to go to and who sits on what committee. Jonas Hoegh-Christensen is a full time Olympic Finn sailor. If he does not know that a man living in his street and sailing at his local club is a part of the ISAF Events Committee then we would argue something is seriously wrong. Further to this the ISAF regularly claim, as has been stated by Pels in this piece, that decisions made are democratic and representative of the sailors’ voice. However, if no-one knows who to speak to that voice becomes rather mute.

Perhaps the biggest complaint in the removal of the Multihull and the selection of women’s match racing is that it will dramatically reduce the media appeal of sailing as a sport. ISAF in this Olympic cycle have specifically identified two distinct areas that events need to fit. Type one events should feature cheap and readily available equipment to help increase nation participation and encourage poorer nations to compete on the Olympic stage. Type two events should feature fast, exciting media friendly boats that help raise the profile of sailing as an exciting to watch sport. To all intents and purposes these two types of event are typically mutually exclusive. The highest performance boats (and so the most fun to watch) are always going to be more modern and cost a lot more money and, as they are likely to still be in their infancy and have higher development costs. We have always supported the concept of looking at the two different needs as entirely separate but these latest decisions do seem to be heavily against the concept of the Type Two event.

We suggested to Pels that perhaps in an effort to push the sport forwards at the Olympics an extremely radical class could be selected every four years for both the men and women that would rarely be the same boat so as to keep up with modern technology. “Olympic classes should be biodegradable so that they should only have a lasting life of about four years? The problem is as soon as you select a class and say it is in the Olympics, nations start to invest in that,” he states. “But there is an emotional thing in this too. Sailing a class is similar to being in a yacht club. The Star for example is a class that you sail and you are a Star sailor. People become emotionally involved. That causes irrational behaviour in what people do with regard to the Olympics because people feel ‘their’ class should be in the Olympics.”

Perhaps people do become too emotionally attached to the classes they sail and perhaps this does lead to resistance against change. However, there is one prime example where this has simply not been the case. The RS:X was introduced as a new class for this Olympic Games and was a brand new design that reflected the path modern windsurfing was taking. Although we accept the RS:X is relatively cheap and so widely available its success is surely proof that people are ready to embrace new technology if only someone would select it to be a part of the Games. “With windsurfing there is lots of development because it is still a young sport,” Pels comments. “Everytime we make a change like going from the Mistral to the RS:X it is a big step. Lots of people involved in the Mistral class were lobbying to stay in the Olympics. However, once we made that decision, everyone else followed and now are mostly part of the RS:X class.”

Finally there is some discussion about exactly what represents the best media appeal in terms of classes for the sport. We at TheDailySail believe fast, modern, lightweight machines are fun and exciting to watch and should be in the Olympics. However, Pels sees the media appeal aspect of classes rather differently. “There are problems with fast classes like multihulls being televised. There are good elements; they are colourful with spinnakers and the onboard TV is good because of the platform. However, the golden rule of televising is that you need to see who is in the lead at all times and the problem with the multihull is it is very hard to tell who is winning. If you can’t see that people get bored. From that point of view the Star is actually the best TV class. They are big so you have a big flag and they go slower so are closer together which looks more interesting,” he explains. So for ISAF at least, the Star is the ultimate media boat in many ways.

So what does Pels personally thinks the chances are of the Multihull being voted back into the Games this weekend? “It is very difficult. No-one will want to re-open their class up for debate. It would be easy to get people to say the multi’ should be back in, but it is difficult to get them to open up the vote again,” he predicts. We suspect that means ‘no’ unfortunately.