New women's Olympic boat

I read elsewhere that ISAF are going to hold an 'Olympic Observation Trial' soon, investigating the possibility of adding a women's high-performance crewed dinghy class to the 2012 Olympics.  Boats will be evaluated against a number of fundamental criteria, one of which is this:

High Performance – The dinghy must be able to sail faster off the wind than on the wind;

Is this a credible definition of High Performance?  (Don't bother to answer that).

Are there any dinghies which are faster on the wind than off the wind?

Perhaps they really mean '...must be able to sail faster than wind'speed'???

Answers on a postcard, sent via donkey, to...

Mike

i thought that the new 29erXX rig was hot favourite to becoming a womens olympic class? or am i wrong

I souldn't worry too much about the published criteria. Once the trials get underway, any criteria that the favoured boat doesn't fulfill will be quietly dropped. That's what they did when they selected the 49er. Criteria are just there to convince the world that it's not a political choice. Starboat re-selection, remember that?

Olympic sailing... a great advert for our sport or  a small group of highly talented sailors from an even smaller number of countries, sailing around courses for long periods of time in, mostly, ancient designs which are a) overpriced and b)  generally so specialised that  only that small group of sailors can get the best from them.

Apart from the Laser and 49er, could you describe any of the other Olympic classes as looking like good, simple, fun?

It's a good thing most of us weren't attracted to dinghy sailing by the Olympics because a narrow group at the top of the ISAF have put our sport in great jepoardy of being thrown out all together - because it's not very exciting TV, doesn't have wide participation and doesn't attract big crowds so beloved of sponsors.

Thank goodness the trend got a rare reversal when they bunged the outdated, flimsy, super tweaky and super expensive Europe for a boat at least 90% of the planets' aspiring Olympic sailors could access and actually sail in the hope that the person who wins will actually be the best sailor (as in the mens Laser) rather than just the best string puller or the person with the biggest training budget.

Who ever said the Olympics was supposed to be about good, simple fun?? It's meant to be the pinnacle of sporting endeavour. Tiddlywinks is good simple fun, let's have that instead of 110 metres hurdles. Nothing wrong with simple boats in the Olympics, but equally, you could say that Olympic classes OUGHT to be difficult to sail.

If you define the "best sailor" as the person who gets their boat round the course in the least time (anyone want to argue with that definition??) then string-pulling is just as much a part of sailing as the physical process of sailing, as is training and rig development.

As for the spectator/sponsor issues, it really doesn't matter what classes are sailed, the sport will never attract big money. As a sailor, some of the most spectacular footage from Athens was the 470's reaching in big breeze, but to non-sailors even 49ers look pretty dull. I personally hope the boat picked for the women's high performance class is genuinely the best available test of all-ruond sailing ability, and not the one that looks best on telly. If it's the 29erxx, great. If it's something else, also great.