Olympic Classes World Cup - A curse or a cure to remain Olympic?

by Bruce Kendall on 10 Oct 2016 Bruce Kendall is and Olympic Gold and Bronze medalist in the Windsurfer classes, before moving onto the Tornado, when it was the Olympic multihull. For over 20 years he has been a Windsurfer coach for both top level campaigns, but also with campaigns for campaigns of more modest means and the so-called developing countries of the world sailing family.

In light of the known judging criteria for which sporting events should remain Olympic for 2024, World Sailing needs to start positioning all its sailing events in a strongest possible way to remain Olympic.

Sailing as a whole is unlikely to be removed and replaced by other sports, but individual sailing classes may be.

The IOC currently don't have any criteria they can share right now since they will only look at this project later in 2016, but the principles outlined in Olympic Agenda 2020, include universality, gender equality, and youth appeal.
I am sure such factors such as the cost of an Olympic Campaign; the cost to run that Olympic Event; and public interest/revenue returned will be a part of the equation.

The current World Cup trajectory of smaller fleets and prior qualification at regional events is expensive, impossible to budget for and so prevents Olympic Class Sailing from growing globally - thus reducing the chances of some sailing events from remaining Olympic for 2024.

World Sailing needs to focus on bringing Olympic campaign costs down and increasing the number of nations participating in Olympic Sailing events.

The Sailing World Cup is at odds with what Olympic Sailing needs to be.

Olympic Classes need to have World Championships with as large fleets as possible to gain more public attention and create more of a following by the time the Olympic event comparisons begin. A World Cup Final could only be a World Championship to be a valid media event and guarantee National Authority, Coaches and Sailors support.

Having a series of World Cup events to qualify for the Final or count as points for a Final result is too expensive for developing nations, so universality is not achieved.

Some sailors who train full time at home such as India may only be able to afford travel overseas for one event every few years, and self-funded sailors only travel for a couple of overseas events each year.

The Sailing World Cup and/or Final is seldom Olympic Sailors' primary goal as the pursuit of the Olympic Games success, World Championships, and Regional Games will always have priority and controlled training at the priority event venue is often more important than just doing another regatta.

Shipping equipment is expensive and time-consuming so European regattas are more successful as well funded teams from all over the world have equipment in Europe as they can attend a number of events with one lot of shipping costs, and Europeans can drive to those events.

One off events in the Americas, Asia or Australia, are costly to attend and any prize money at this point does not cover even the winner’s costs of attending let alone those further down the fleet.

Top sailors will sometimes choose to save their money and train at home, or off the water, or at a venue most suited to their requirements, to help them win an Olympic medal rather than attend a world cup event. For example, Bryony Shaw and Nick Dempsey the GBR Olympic RSX reps chose to attend a Coaches Regatta in Rio and rest during the following World Cup event in their hometown, Weymouth. Nick started in some races but did not complete the series. Their focus is the Olympic Games.

Regardless of the cost of moving equipment around the planet, too much traveling is not only costly but also very time consuming and factors such as recovery time, jet lag, climate and food changes are important factors considered in Olympic campaigns. Consequently, the number of events attended must be limited. There are currently too many events in the annual calendar for most athletes for RSX sailors to be able to attend, recover and train in between.

Some top sailors – especially in the 49er and Nacra Class - are also professional sailors in other classes such as the America’s Cup and similar regattas and need to earn money and attend those events. When there is a clash with a World Cup event and an event where they are part of a professional team, there will be great pressure on them to attend that professional event.

Because many World Cup events [including the finals] do not attract all the top Olympic Class Sailors. These events are not the always peak events for the year and can’t claim to be and so cannot attract the media or public attention hoped for.

Forcing Sailors to attend?

There have been suggestions that World Sailing and World Cup Organizers will use the World Cup as part of the Olympic Qualification system to force sailors towards those events that are not well attended. This potentially makes Olympic campaigns potentially more expensive which most likely will collapse any self-funded campaigns [often the USA] or developing nations who are already struggling such as India. Olympic Sailing needs to find a way to grow the number of developing nations attend more events, not make an Olympic Campaign cost prohibitive.

Limited entry for World Cups?

The fleet sizes being limited as in Hyeres 2015 and 2016 creates an elitist sport and is contrary to sailing events remaining Olympic.

Limited entry events are nice for the top-level sailors, but a disaster for building up the sport with new nations and sailors. A high number of different nations in as many classes as possible, attending Olympic Class events and especially Olympic Class World Championships is crucial to those classes remaining in the Olympic Games in 2024 more than the racing enjoyment level for the top sailors.

Limited fleet sizes reduce the volume of interest in the event unless it is extremely exciting to watch, or the stakes are high.

People are more interested in a result [even if it is boring to watch] if they have a friend competing. They, in turn, will become aware of the champions and follow them too. The Laser class needs large fleet numbers to have a large public following.

The Olympic Games has a limited fleet size but high stakes, so it is very important for the rest of the regattas to be very big to increase global public awareness and following interest.

Growing fleet sizes:

Larger fleets attract more sponsorship revenue and can grow the sport.

Increasing fleet sizes can be achieved by a number of methods.

Reducing entry fees to sensible amounts will attract more entries. The 2016 World Cup In Weymouth had a 600-euro entry fee, without any prize money, which meant that not enough Kite surfers entered [all self-funded] and so this event was cancelled.

Prize money levels that can cover the costs of competing and leave a profit for the top sailors will help free those sailors from just attending the regattas that the National authorities fund their sailor to attend.

Inviting age and lower level groups such as Masters, Youth and Weekend Warriors and introducing weight classes can increase fleet sizes.

Reduction in the number of races per day to a more physically achievable two races per day will allow those less capable to complete a series and have more time for social activities.

Well thought out and promoted social programs with more shore-based entertainment and activities for the sailors and general public which can generate more revenue and media coverage. Kiel Week has continued to go well where Olympic Sailing is a fraction of the whole event. The 2016 World Cup in Hyeres shore based program did not work well, and the medal races were too far away.

Campaign cost reduction:

World Sailing needs to find ways to help reduce global transport of equipment and supplying more charter equipment for training before and at the events to reduce campaign costs and encourage those with very low budgets to attend.

More containerized events are required where the sailors can charter race-winning equipment or have their equipment in the pool of chartered equipment.

Of course, this equipment would need to arrive one month before the event for training.

Finance and publicity:
Without generating large fleets globally, Olympic Class sailing will struggle to gain public attention through the media and continue to limp along financially.

Events that can sell spectator tickets or have good ratings on television and the Internet will always have the revenue to further build their Sport.

After many years of effort from many people, Olympic Sailing still has a very limited spectator and media understanding of how sailors compete or get around the course. Even with the reduced fleet sizes and race lengths of medal races, to make the sport easier to follow, rarely do we see any more than one or two hundred spectators a day. Often the majority of those spectators are coaches and sailors not competing.

Bringing Olympic fleets very close to the shore is a clear solution but seldom happens. Sports where the public buys tickets to watch up close such as tennis and is easy to understand will always be more marketable than Olympic Sailing.

Seldom does the organization have the funds or time to edit and post video footage well enough to tell the story each day for each class. At best they normally only manage to show montages with colourful or short action shots, a few interviews, and some results. Fleet races are an extremely difficult story to tell well although modern technology is helping.

Most other sports are easier film and edit and so less expensive to televise and present live to the public and so easier to sell to sponsors.

Large racing boats can take sponsors for rides, Olympic boats cannot.

The large sail size and hulls are better advertising billboards than the smaller Olympic craft.

Due to the above, the Olympic Sailing Classes are hard to sell to sponsors as events or for National or individual campaigns.

Event organizers need to recognize small boat Sailing is more a participation than a spectator sport and focus more on building fleet sizes, attracting and entertaining the public through extra other means and finally modifying race courses and formats to bring the sailing physically and visually close to the public along with on shore visual media and live commentary.

World sailing needs to improve its down loadable Video collection so it can also be used for coaching purposes.

World sailing needs to train and gear up a media team and commentators so that they can show a whole race properly and entertain nonsailors with the human aspects and technical statistics of the sport properly. Sadly, this was done poorly at the Rio Olympics. Also, the national authorities need to foster better relationships with their local media so the coverage is shown properly.

World Sailing and National authorities have one more chance to get it right before 2020.

Improve Media and Spectator viewing and understanding:
Our sport is complicated for the general public to understand.

Event organizers need to make it possible for the public to look along the start and finish lines to clearly see the boats cross as it is one of the few times spectators can understand the race.

Without commentary or electronics, mark rounding’s are the only way of knowing how a sailors race is progressing so more marks need to be close to shore.

Sailors who start too early and are allowed to finish are very confusing for spectators and media. The historical range of acronyms [BFD, OCS, PMS] has only made the results sheets more confusing.

In no other sport does an early starter have such a massive negative effect on other rule-abiding competitors and nor is there another Olympic sport where this allowed. If there are sailors who cross the start line too early, those sailors should be penalized and the race restarted.

Most of the racing is too far away from shore such that it is very difficult to tell who is winning or where their friends or family are placed. In the Youth Olympics tickets were sold out. But after two days of the racing almost being out of sight of land, due to the race committee’s flagrant disregard for the ticket paying spectators and inability to take advice from coaches, the spectator numbers quickly dwindled.

Even the current “media friendly” Medal Race is confusing, as spectators have no idea of who won over all when the sailors cross the line. The results still need to be calculated. Although the course area is smaller and target time is shorter, most of the World Cup medal races are still too far from land to observe what happened from shore.

Due to the advancements in electronics, the broadcast video of the Olympic yachting events from the Rio Olympic Games were the best we have ever seen.

Sadly the people coordinating which image was to be broadcast were not experienced enough to be able to show the right ones to tell the story of the race.

There is no point in only following the leading boat at the bottom mark for the beat when it is getting passed by the boats on the other side of the course and then suddenly it is sixth at the top mark and the story of why it was passed was lost.

They also had a technical time delay with the tracking and did not always have the potential race leaders marked so the video did not match up with the tracking. This made it very difficult for live commentary.

The English commentary of the Olympic Games in NZ was also poor as the commentators were clearly unfamiliar with the different technical aspects and interesting innovations of the classes and knew little about the sailors. This was due to their not having any contact with the sport for four years and not doing enough research to get up to speed.

World Sailing needs to train up a media team by using them on a regular basis and they can improve the technology to better tell the story live to those watching live or at a later around the world.

Format Solutions for Spectator viewing:
Larger fleets require larger courses and longer race times. Better spectator and media understanding is best with small fleets and short races close to shore with courses that make the racing easy to understand.

World Sailing needs to be more proactive in working with the Olympic classes to develop formats and systems to bridge the different requirements and produce high quality, fair, safe racing.

Sailing events remaining in the Olympics?

The 2024 Olympic events will be chosen by a rating system against other Olympic Events - not Sports.

For example, Sailing will not be competing against Swimming as a sport. But in effect the Swimming Men’s 100-metre Freestyle event will be competing against Sailing Men’s Singlehanded Sailing event on the grounds of the number of nations at World Championships, costs to set up for and run the event, revenue returned from ticket sales, etc. and spectator and media interest etc.

It will be important that more nations compete in Olympic sailing events than other Olympic events every year before 2020 Olympics.

It is time World Sailing (WS) made some very necessary changes. WS has been slow to take full advantage of modern technology and trends and follow the clear logic for the good of the sport rather than national self-interest.

Any organization that actively reduces sailings chances of remaining Olympic based on the above [such as the Sailing World Cup] should be discontinued.

Solutions to Sailing retaining a full Olympic Slate:

Discontinue the Olympic Classes World Cup.

World Sailing should sanction and rank events so national authorities, coaches, and sailors can be guided which events to attend.

World Sailing needs a faster moving continual process for evolving race courses and regatta formats developed by and implemented by the classes, with the recognition that the Olympic Games regatta may adopt a new but well-tested class approved format.’

Regatta organizers with the assistance of World Sailing need to focus more on bringing the racing to the spectators and the media for the top ranked events for the class organizations.

To attract developing and small nations, World Sailing needs to look at ways to reduce costs for Olympic Campaigns with the likes of lower entry fees, more competitive charter equipment at more events and assistance with equipment transport costs.

Summary:

• The current World Cup and race formats are a curse to remaining Olympic.

• More nations sailing, bigger fleet sizes, better regatta and race formats and an improved media product and distribution are the solutions.

• Partly due to World Sailings historical inability to evolve or globally grow the sport properly due to nations voting in self-interest rather than the long-term health of the sport and allowing the Sailing World Cup to continue in its current format, Olympic Sailing Discipline / Events are in danger of dropping out of the 2024 Olympic Games.

I hope the next World Sailing November meeting will bring positive change.