ISAF - Not Fit For Purpose

by Gerald New on 10 Nov 2007 The latest vote by the ISAF Council to set the catagories for the Olympic Sailing events for the 2012 games to be held at Weymouth did a deep disservice to the potential for a great and spectacular event in the UK.

With Qingdao looking to be a foggy, drifting washout, the 2012 events at Weymouth have a chance to restore some sanity to sailing as an Olympic event. By their inbred and blinkered decisions in Portugal last week, the ISAF Council showed themselves to be Not Fit For Purpose.

It will take a major turn-around for the choice of categories to be overturned and some sense of a future for sailing in the Olympics to be restored.

By removing the multihull and the chance of a new skiff, while keeping two, double handed events and introducing a keelboat match racing event, the council showed once again that the present make-up and voting procedures weigh hugely in favour of the vested interests of the existing classes.

This inward looking arrangement stifles any real chance of progress or inovative thinking from arising within the ISAF, or if it does, ensures that it is killed off by the horse-trading and block voting of dinosaurs. More interested in maintaining the perceived status that Olympic selection bestows on their favoured class, than raising the profile and maintaining the future of the sport.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Many other major sports have suffered similarly from these old guard, out-of-touch ruling bodies. The answer has been to break their death grip and form new associations that are more in touch with the active competitors and modern audiences.

Tennis, Cricket and Rugby Union, all had to fight to achieve what we now accept as the modern game. All had to dump the top heavy, dead hand of self-perpetuating organisations that had become a brake on change and progress. If the ISAF continues to display such Dodo like tendencies, they too could be heading for extinction.