What kind of sailor are YOU?

Dobbs Davies examines the first outing of ISAF's new Competitor Classification system

Some background

Sailing has a unique position among competitive sports by allowing professionals and amateurs to compete with or against each other on the same playing field. For many years this arrangement was a good symbiosis, allowing keen amateurs the opportunity to learn from professionals, and professionals the opportunity to market their goods or services to those interested in gaining a performance edge on their competition.

However, it is precisely this last point that started causing concern with many race organisers over the last few years, where those amateurs unwilling or unable to seek professional help felt those that were had an unsportsman-like advantage. The situation worsened as boat designs became faster but technically more challenging to sail, making the need for crewing expertise stronger than ever.

A good example of this was the Mumm 36 class where the widespread perception began to develop that in order to be competitive an all-pro team was necessary. The mantra "Pros are killing the sport" became a battle cry for change.

In response to this, class organizers and event managers sought to find a way of limiting the number of professionals involved with crews and/or events in the hope that the level of competitiveness could be dropped down to a level more accessible to more people. While this concept sounded good, there was no general agreement on how to define exactly who was a 'professional' and who was an 'amateur'.

Several codes were developed, from the MIR (Marine Industry Representative) code in Southern California, to the Appendix R Eligibility Code in the US, and what ultimately became the RYA code used in Ford Cork Week in Ireland.

John Williams of Ulmer Kolius Sails was in on the ground floor of organizing Cork Week to be the huge flagship amateur event it has become, attracting hundreds of boats and thousands of sailors. "We wanted to design a categorization system that would allow someone on one boat to look across the water at their competitors and not feel as if they were at a disadvantage as an amateur sailor," he said.

This approach worked so well that the event has grown to attract interest from pro-level teams, and an Open Class was offered to give them a competitive part in the event.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic the US offshore One Design market has exploded, due in part to dissatisfaction with rating rules and the ability of classes to define who is eligible to sail. Owner-driver rules were deemed an insufficient restriction at the advent of the Mumm 30 class, so with the help of one of the original Mumm 30 owners Dave Irish, a new US code was developed to define three classes of sailors: professionals, amateurs, and those somewhere in between.

These were given the respective designations Group 3, Group 1, and Group 2, and limits were defined in the Mumm 30 class rules as to the group status eligibility of crew members and helmsmen. The system worked well enough to be adopted by more classes such as the Farr 40 and 1D35 as they came into the market and have recently even been adopted by older classes, such as the J/105.

As with any ideas that become policies that become rules, a system had to be devised to enforce them. In the US, this was taken on by US Sailing, where individual competitors submitted their answers to application questions to a committee, with a panel of three members from this committee empowered to confer a group status on the applicant. Decisions could be appealed, with a different review panel devised to examine the case.

This is a fundamentally different system to the RYA code used at Ford Cork Week and the Rolex Commodore's Cup, where individuals simply declare their status, and a panel is empowered to agree or disagree with their declaration and urge them to reconsider or face possible protest.

To find out about the new code see page 2...
To read about the Code at the Swan Europeans see page 3...
To find about ISAF's questionaire see page 4...