Double Silver medalist against Olympic events card

by www.Rule69blog.com on 12 Nov 2007

Ian Walker (GBR), double Olympic Silver medalist "I have sailed Stars in the Olympics and even I think they should not be in the Games" Rule69blog.com www.rule69blog.com

When someone of the stature of Ian Walker speaks out, the sailing world should listen. One of the greatest sailors that Britain has ever produced, a Cambridge graduate, a legendary crew of the legendary John Merricks and the brains behind countless world-beating campaigns...oh yes and a couple of silver medals in the attic...Read this and weep ISAF...

Magnus,

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. 24 hours ago I thought the ISAF Events Committee had sobered up from their night on the tiles by deciding to axe the 2 keelboat classes - at last they have seen some sense.

Get rid of the 2 most expensive boats to campaign that hardly anybody sails - obvious! They have now perfected a U turn faster than any modern political party. If ISAF cannot see that high performance dinghies are the way of the future and that the obvious way to increase female participation in the Olympics (and the sport) was the women’s high performance dinghy then there is little hope.

How can you possibly justify ruling out a women’s high performance dinghy in favour of women’s match racing? How many countries have a women’s match racer? Is this the future of our sport? Compared to high performance sailing, match racing is dull and the technicalities are understood by few - there is no obvious feeder (except maybe university team racing) and the bigger countries will simply 'out coach' the smaller nations to victory.

Ian Walker (GBR) and Andy Covell, Star Silver medalists in Sydney 2000. © Jessica Statham
If match racing is so good why has it already been kicked out of the Olympics for the men? If it is so good then surely have it for men and women! I suspect it is simply a convenient way of getting the number of female competitors up with only 1 medal allocated. The saddest thing in all this is that Weymouth is a fantastic venue for high performance sailing and there will be lots of female 29er youth sailors who will not be able to move up to the Olympic classes.

For the rest of this story http://www.rule69blog.com/archive/2007/november/943/!click_here
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