49er, Nacra 17, and Laser survive first Round for 2024 Olympics

The 49erFX has got the initial thumbs up from World Sailing's 2024 Olympic Class Review © Richard Gladwell

World Sailing announced the meeting minutes of the Events Committee today with regard to event review for Paris 2024. The Events Committee recommendation is to put up for review the Finn, 470, and RSX, leaving the 49er, 49erFX, Nacra 17, Radial, and Laser as they are for 2024. Here is the Paper outlining the voting and reasoning behind the recommendation.

This is only the first round of the process, and is nothing more than a recommendation. This recommendation is now sent to the World Council of World Sailing. They will have a call to review the findings, and then hold their own vote to decide which Events go up for review and which should remain as they are for 2024. Each Councillor must nominate at least 4 events for review, and then the four Events with the most votes go up for review along with any other events receiving more than 50% of the vote.

The voting from Events Committee reflects the debate within Events Committee on this topic. There were 14 Events Committee members who voted. The events recommended to go up for review received 11 or 12 votes. The other events received 4 or 5 votes. There is an argument that all 10 events should put up for review, since the names of the Events are actually the names of boats rather than events, and since the IOC doesn’t want phraseology like ‘heavyweight,’ we should nominate all events and start from a blank slate. The counterargument, which won out, was that there is no intention of replacing all of the events and equipment for 2024, so we should keep the events we are sure should remain for 2024 to decrease the amount of risk, politics, and lobbying for the next round of the process. It was deemed possible to change the names of the Events, so long as the nature of the Events themselves would remain unchanged, in a separate process in the future.

The Events that have not been put up for review should be viewed as the fleet racing core of a future Olympic slate of events:

Men’s One Person Fleet Racing Women’s One person Fleet Racing Men’s Two Person Fleet Racing Women’s Two Person Fleet Racing Mixed Two Person Fleet Racing

Once World Council makes their decision on which events should be up for review, the same body’s will go through a second round of this process to determine which events should make up the balance of the slate. That decision will be made in at the mid-year meeting in London in May. Then in November 2018, those Events will have equipment selected and the process should be complete. There is a chance some of the equipment decisions might be delayed for 1 more full year, particularly if new equipment is being considered, to give parties more time to design and test equipment.

At the end of the whole process, in June of 2020, the IOC will review each event on it’s merit and finalize the slate (or not).