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RS Sailing 2021 - LEADERBOARD

ISAF decisions, AC45s, Williams wins and all the latest sailing news

by Sail-World.com Team on 9 May 2011
Welcome to Sail-World.com's latest UK newsletter.

The International Sailing Federation's Mid-Year meeting took centrestage on Friday and Saturday as the Events for the 2016 Olympiad were determined.

As is usual when such decisions are made, any notions that the best interests of the sport being paramount, are quickly put aside, and the usual power struggle emerges between the Star keelboat and the 470 dinghy as they struggle to remain in the Olympic Sailing Regatta.

Sadly the common tactic, when the going gets tough, is to pick the weakest class and try to throw them out of the equation.

This happened once again on Friday, when the 49er became the target, to the incredulity of many of those at the meeting in St Petersburg, Russia. Even more amazingly, the body firing the bullets at the most spectacular boat in the Olympics, was the ISAF's Executive Committee.

We have several reports in this edition on how the debate and amazing battle unfolded, and what the Events will be for the 2016 Olympics to be staged in Rio de Janeiro.

As discussed in the wrap-up story on the final day of the Council Meeting, we believe the actions of the Executive Committee, and others, will have a far more reaching effect in the ISAF's affairs than just this meeting.

For some time we have been railing against PR sanitising of sailing events. There is no more graphic example of this practice than the official ISAF report on the Mid-Year meeting and the other reports of the same event. Reading the ISAF report one could be excused for believing they were at another venue. To be fair, many other event spin doctors are equally as guilty.

Sailing needs colour - as other sports do - and they make as many headlines during the week as they do in the weekend. Life's not all good news and happy clapping. Reporting what really happened, it's essential to build a fan base. The lows are just as important as the highs. That's what sport is about. Celebrate and report it.

The America's Cup Media Trials have concluded in Auckland and the AC45's are being packed off to Europe.
In this edition of Sail-World, we have a couple of reports on the final two days.

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Ian Williams has won the Open de Espana in Calpe, the UK Finn title has been won by Allen Burrell and we have news from the RYA Eric Twiname Championships and the Wilson Trophy, British Open Team Racing Championships.

While the focus was on ISAF, lots did happen this week and we have all the latest sailing news from around the world on our website www.sail-world.com

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