Editorial- Where to for the Tornado?

by nzeditor@sail-world.com on 1 Mar 2008
Strong winds forced the cancellation of the final day’s racing in the 2008 Tornado World Championships, giving Australia’s Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby the world title.

By any measure these two sailors are a class act, both in the way they conduct themselves ashore, and on the water.

On the water the Points Table shows their mettle. How many crews in the world could come back from being down in 19th overall after the first two races in what proved to be an eight race series and win? And, achieve that comeback across the full range of wind conditions. And, never dropping below eight place in the final six races – the only crew in the regatta to achieve this level of consistency.

Yes, consistency is a word that sums up the performance of Bundock and Ashby – and they have set a very high standard going into the 2008 Olympics.

Hats off too, to their coach Mike Fletcher – for his eighth World Championship win.

Behind Bundock and Ashby it was a close contest for second with two crews tied on points. The Canadian combination of Oskar Johansson and Kevin Stittle were the surprise packet of the regatta, finishing second after being unable to qualify for the 2008 Olympics at the Cascais Worlds just six months ago, when they finished 18th overall. In fact this crew had not finished better than 16th overall in any of the last four world championships and were second to last in the 2004 Olympics. However as they revealed in an audio interview published on the www.takapunaworlds.org they had a major rethink after Cascais, and put together a plan that resulted in a Silver medal at the 2008 Worlds.

One cannot but feel a lot of sympathy for the French crew of Yann Guichard and Aleandre Guyader. After Guichard suffered the death of his father a week before the regatta, they led the points table after the second and third/fourth day. Their wheels fell off in Race 8 when they scored a 23rd place in the 51 strong fleet. That dropped them back to second equal with the Canadians on points - only to lose on a countback. The irony of Guichard and Guyader’s situation is that the French Olympic nomination in the Tornado class was decided before the 2008 Worlds – and it was not them.

The other point of interest was whether a New Zealand crew could qualify for the 2008 Olympics – which Aaron McIntosh and Mark Kennedy achieved taking the third of four places on offer. While others in the class have been running fulltime campaigns, Kennedy and McIntosh only got together back in late October having their first run at Labour Weekend in the 108nm Coastal Classic. They were first home by 25 minutes.

In this World Championship they finished 12th overall – just five points out of seventh overall and at one point they were up to fourth overall. Quite how the YNZ Olympic selectors see this performance remains to be seen.

Again we have featured an interesting audio interview with McIntosh and Kennedy on the TakapunaWorlds.org website.

This regatta could well be the last ever World Championships for the Tornado as an Olympic class.

Certainly there was a changing of the guard at the Int Tornado Class Association meeting, with the election of Carolijn Brouwer as the new President, and a new committee.

However the class did itself no favours at the Worlds prizegiving with an attack on Yachting New Zealand by past ITA President John Forbes, seemingly endorsed by the new ITA President and echoed with the booing from the competitors tables as Yachting New Zealand President Jan Dawson made her way forward to make a closing address to what had otherwise been a brilliant regatta for the class.

Forbes probed, parried and quoted from a leaked email from the Yachting NZ Olympic Committee, which got onto the internet some months ago and was seized upon by the international multihull community.

The fact that the recommendation was not accepted by the YNZ Board seemed to be lost on Forbes. As too was the fact that Yachting New Zealand is one of the few organisations with the guts to have said they intend to make a submission to ISAF requesting a review of the event selection for the 2012 Olympics.

For the Multihull to make it back into the 2012 Olympics, there has to be quite a few more Yachting New Zealand’s prepared to make such a stand.

Forbe’s comments underline the political naivety of the multihull movement. Very simply you can have the most compelling case in the world, but if countries aren’t prepared to vote for it, then it won’t fly.

At this crucial time, the multihull movement needs all the friends it can muster. Attacking an organisation that has made a stand in your favour seems rather odd, to say the least.

With two Yachting NZ directors in the audience, plus the President and CEO, Forbes speech was a cheap shot, that did neither him nor the multihull movement any credit at all. The smart thing to have done would have been to praise and thank Yachting NZ for its stand and ask them to encourage others to do the same.

The effect of his attack on Yachting New Zealand will no doubt keep for another day. However it was an opportunity needlessly lost, and one that the Tornado class can ill-afford to lose.

Good sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor