Olympic Sailing- New multihull analysis asks hard questions of ISAF

by Richard Gladwell and UKCRA on 4 Nov 2010
Just over a week before the start of the International Sailing Federation's Annual Meeting in Athens, Greece the vociferous UK Catamaran Racing Association has issued an analysis, which not surprisingly makes a strong case for the inclusion of a Multihull Event in the 2016 Olympic Sailing Regatta.

Three years ago, at the same conference in Estoril, Portugal, the various Olympic class politicians lobbied for a retention of their nearest and dearest. The multihulls were caught unawares, and the outcome was that the Multihull Event, and the spectacular Tornado catamaran, were bumped off the Olympic bus.

That decision has proved to be a major embarrassment for the world's governing body, particularly when the rest of the sailing world moved towards multihull sailing - including the 33rd America's Cup, and now the 34th America's Cup. The 2010 America's Cup was sailed in massive 120ft multihulls, and the 2013 event will use the AC45 class for preliminary competition and the AC72 class for the America's Cup itself.

While the decision to exclude the Multihull Event for the 2012 Olympic regatta in Weymouth, has been to the continual embarrassment of the ISAF, to its credit the world body established a review group, the Olympic Commission to look at a number of issues with the Olympic sailing regatta.

The OC has reported back twice to the ISAF and its first report essentially told the sailing world that the prognosis for its Olympic regatta was terminal, unless radical change was made.

Again to its credit the Executive Committee of the ISAF backed the findings of the Olympic Commission and the first round of voting for the shape of the 2016 Olympic Regatta and beyond will take place next week in Greece.

The lead-up to the 2007 decisions on Olympic events and its aftermath was a period of bitter acrimony as the disparate multihull class associations got organised and lobbied furiously, producing some very good analysis of the situation as they saw it.

The key to the multihull argument was that as an event, and major discliple of sailing they had been excluded in favour of retaining three snglehanded events and retaining three doublehanded events.

That led a number of countries to propose that in future the Olympics should reflect the major disciplines of the sport and that there should be some gender balance towards maybe five events each for Men and Women covering the five major disciplines of sailing - singlehanded, doublehanded, windsurfer, keelboat and multihull.

The Olympic Commission while not fully endorsing the concepts, went well down the path and its recommendations have been picked up by the ISAF's Executive Committee in two key submissions to the Annual Meeting on the Events for 2016 and beyond.

The first of those submissions recommends the establishment of an initial group of six Core Events which can be changed only at 10 years notice and before then with a 66% majority vote from the ISAF Council. Up to eight Core Events may be established. The other Events will be for one Olympic cycle only (but may be rolled over of course). All Events must be established six years before the Olympic Regatta.

'With its ration of only 10 Olympic medal events ISAF faces extremely difficult decisions as to which events to choose', notes the report from the UKCRA. 'Making the wrong decisions could even jeopardise the position of Sailing as a sport within the Games in the new era of competition between sports.

'The decision to take multi-hulls out of the 2012 Games produced a furore the like of which has not been seen before in sailing – and with up to 25% of the sailing public involved in multi-hulls this was hardly surprising.

'Much anger was also garnered concerning the clear demonstration by certain ISAF council members of the vested interests of their nations rather than keeping to their remit of making sure that their decisions were in the interest of sailing as a whole.

'Over the past four years much debate and discussion has thus rightly been held on the correct choices for the future – choices that need to include what appear as conflicting elements, viz. representation, TV and media appeal rather than tradition – which sad choice last time around led to the Games continuing to keep a nearly 100 year old design sailed by a tiny portion of the sailing world and exclude the fastest and most exciting craft on the water today.

'We acknowledge that it is an extremely difficult task to achieve the right balance. With five specific skills, (1 Person Dinghy, 2 Person Dinghy, Keelboat, Multi-hull and Windsurfer), two sexes and two weight categories, it would need 20 Events.

'If it eliminated duplication and weight categories, the problem would be solved with one Event each for men and one for women in five distinct disciplines, namely One Person Dinghy, Two Person Dinghy, Keelboat, Multi-hull and Windsurfer. This in our view is the correct apportioning of the events.

'There is however an alternative suggestion that would permit another permutation that includes 2 mixed sex events, and UKCRA can also support this approach - as we suggested it in our original Report - albeit with less enthusiasm than expressed for the 5:5.'

To read the full text www.sail-world.com/files/ISAF_Report_Oct2010.pdf!click_here