No more Olympic keelboat racing?!

Greenheart

Greenheart

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I just learned that the Star class has been dropped from the Rio 2016 Olympics. How very sad, but how hard it is to act surprised! It's even harder, impossible in fact, to respect the various Olympic committees which have, by degrees, welcomed then disowned so many terrific classes. No Flying Dutchman now...no catamaran class any more either...and now, no keelboat at all?

How long can the Finn endure in the 21st century, when these committees have decided that male and female crews should be expected to share classes as far as possible, regardless of physical unsuitability? What used to be a hugely prestigious competition which rewarded long practice and shrewd personal specification of components and materials, looks like becoming a burger-joint contest, for anyone spontaneously interested that fortnight.

Is Olympic sailing henceforth intended to attract gifted novices who grow bored easily? A sort of wildcard event - you won't even need a boat - Laser will send a container-full, so anyone who fancies trying it, can buy one on the beach on the day of the race.

Then again...I've heard that the Contender class has consistently thrived, since not being selected for the Olympics four decades ago...others, too...so best of luck, I say, to all those beautiful and rewardingly impractical, challenging boats that countless Olympic committees weren't emotionally developed enough to respect or understand. Dragons, Flying Dutchmans, Tornados, Stars, Tempests...all gone, and they've taken the magic their names suggested.

We're left with 49er, 470, Laser and windsurfer... Dismal. Long live the Finn!
 
I have some sympathy as regards the glamour of these classes but the cost of running a competitive campaign in them has become ridiculous. For example, when Rodney Patisson won his gold he personally went to South America to select the tree that would be felled to make his mast!

On a more modest level I know two young lads who decided to seriously campaign a Tornado with a view to Olympic selection. These boats are built so lightly, with undersized fittings, that they broke something every time they sailed. If they used bigger fittings and components the weight would increase and they would be uncompetitive. The only answer is to go to high-tech, high-cost gear, trebling the cost of a £10,000 boat. Their father was paying very enthusiastically at first but he was forced to admit defeat well before they were nearing selection.
 
Yes it is the same in rowing. Soon there will be even less categories to compete in.
How many remember a GB cox standing and celebrating in the front of a coxed pair when they won gold.... no more coxed pair. It's the same for other classes of rowing too.
Also the use of modern materials eventually made them put a lower weight limit on boats because it became more and more expensive with only the richest able to afford the lightest boats.
Sailing is a little bit of the odd man out here as classes are of 'restricted' design, whereas rowing has very few limitations upon the hull design and shape.

I really feel very uncomfortable with top sport these days. Professionalism has changed the way that many approach their sport in my view. I doubt if I'll take a great deal of interest in much of the Olympics.... my office pal managed to get tickets for the womens beach ball... now what times that on?.. ;)
 
I don't think I'd object to anti-plutocratic changes, if, IF, they didn't pour out the infant with the warm water. There was definitely something wrong previously, if a thoroughly capable team with moderate means, couldn't find 50% or more of the cash required to equip a boat of sufficiently wildly exotic construction to be competitive. That's a test of leading-edge kit perhaps, but not of sportive ability.

On the other hand...the appeal of Olympic yachting always seemed to me to involve the long, profitable build-up of a team's competence and athleticism in the machinery it bespoke for its use. If one top Olympic team uses kit costing ten times what the neighbouring team used, is there not a similar disparity between the equippage of almost every international-level dinghy crew in each class?

Isn't the loss of keelboat classes from the Olympics, just a general admission of financial lack of interest in the premier performance which Olympic prestige always used to drive teams to achieve? I think I've just convinced myself, to pay more respect to international class winners, than to any nation's best-bet Olympic hopeful. Unless he, or she, or they, are actually the self-same cats and kittens... :D
 
Yes, from my p-o-v as a Brit who is used to seeing the team bring home gold-coloured bacon because we sail expensive specialist kit that is available here, but not widely elsewhere, it's regrettable.

But, seen from a more global viewpoint, it has to be preferable that races should be sailed using relatively affordable kit that can be sailed anywhere, from an African lake to a tropical beach. That way more nations can compete on more equal terms and sailing can be seen as a less white Anglo-Saxon/Western European sport.

Compare sailing with athletics, where the only kit needed is a vest, pants and running shoes. Affordable pretty much everywhere, and that's why we see Caribbeans, Africans, Chinese, etc winning medals.
 
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When I was a teenager, in Athens, I was training with the Olympic team but gave it up when I moved to the UK, some carried on training and one of our team members won the Olympic Finn class, his name; Prince Constantine and later King.

Dragons, Solings, Finns, Flying Dutchmans, 420s, 470s all were brilliant to sail and great fun; but it is nice to see new designs with new challenges.
 
Keep up at the back. This was announced some weeks ago, and finally got a reasonably sensible outcome after last minute politicing by ISAF council.

After lots of complaints about previous selections most of the sang nations submitted their views. Almost all supported the Laser and the 470. Reason being that these have the biggest support globally and consistently the biggest turnout at ISAF events.
Fact is that competing in a Star at international events was cripplingly expensive so few countries could afford to compete. And some ISAF events even failed to get enough to hold a class.

So overall quite a reasonable set of classes. Laser, Radial and both 470s retained for affordable global competition, now both mens and womens skiff for high speed dramatics, retained Finn, windsurfers - and added back multihull which is good news.
Olympics should be about athletes. Sadly numbers of boats and competitors are limited so in this context keelboats didn't make the cut.
But lots of other top events for big boats - Americas cup, Volvo etc
 
sailing is not a fashion

These committees should forget fashion and celebrate great boats that have survived the decades. Racing Olympic classes need to be promoted by yachting press.
 
I hadn't heard, that there will be an Olympic catamaran, again. Which model will it be? And why, if cost is indeed the issue that excluded the Star? I'd have thought the Tornado's complexity and weight/strength/exotic material considerations make it scarily expensive. That's one of the reasons I loved seeing them at the Olympics...because I didn't often see them anywhere else!

Considering the multi-billion-dollar scale of the modern Olympics, I don't see why very costly top-performing classes (which are just as glamorous and exciting as the vast stadia and media-coverage and hero-worship given to winners) are in any way out of place.

These games aren't a darts match in a sawdust-joint. The whole thing is sky-high, upmarket...that's why it isn't annual. So why should the events themselves be cheap-jack commonplace stuff that you can just as easily see on a pond near you, any given Sunday?
 
dancrane said:
Considering the multi-billion-dollar scale of the modern Olympics, I don't see why very costly top-performing classes (which are just as glamorous and exciting as the vast stadia and media-coverage and hero-worship given to winners) are in any way out of place.

Maybe because many very good sailors can't afford to campaign them? Not every nation has the RYA and Volvo paying its boat jockeys to sail full time and take megabucks kit to every relevant international meeting.

These games aren't a darts match in a sawdust-joint. The whole thing is sky-high, upmarket...that's why it isn't annual. So why should the events themselves be cheap-jack commonplace stuff that you can just as easily see on a pond near you, any given Sunday?

Back to athletics - you can use the same running shoes in the Olympic stadium as you'd use in your local park. Call it 'level playing fields'.
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If you really want to see hi-tech boats sailed to the nth, just rock up to the world championships for that class. Of course, the top sailors won't be there. They'll be flogging a Laser or a 470 around yet another race course.
 
I expect you're right, Ken, but the P.C. equality of those committees' ideals doesn't attract me as much as before, to watch the Olympics. It was a series of matchless events, and if the kit was swoon-inducingly expensive, and absurdly rare and complicated, well, that was the state of the art and the pinnacle of the sport at the time.

It was exciting, and anyone, even those who don't know port from starboard, could find interest in that concentration of athleticism, applied with new, science-challenging, jaw-droppingly costly kit, aboard big, quite scary boats, which often required nursing round courses if one hoped to finish.

Now? Just plastic, tough, mass-produced board-boats, no different from the filthy old one your neighbour has filled up with petunias in his rockery. Olympic sailing has become scrupulously fair, easily affordable, zero exclusivity, not remotely extreme, and, I'm afraid...dull. :(
 
I actually, for once, can see the sense in the classes selected. Although the reports of how we got here make frightening reading. Apparently at one point in the negotiations it actually looked like the 49er was going to be out!

Laser - cheap, accessable.

Laser radial - cheap accessable, and for the girls.

470 - Ubiquitous just about everywhere except the UK, where they're only sailed by people who want to go the Olympics. If you want this style of sailing it's really the only option.

49er - great TV, exciting, still (just about) the fastest doublehanded boat out there.

Women's skiff - why should the 49er boys have all the fun?

Catamaran - sailed mixed, making this the only compulsory mixed event in the whole Olympics

Finn - For men who aren't whippets, and allows some development, esp of sail/mast - so a slightly different game than just the "all are the same" laser.

Boards (might be kite, might be windsurf, an evaluation will take place)

However, it has thrown up a couple of oddities.
Women's match racing is out for 2016 - before it even makes it's debut in 2012!
No keelboats at all.

The argument in favour of the star is that it allows a different "shape" of person. In the same way that in Athletics having the shot put allows a different shape of person from the 100m sprinters. Currently, the range of weights / shapes that would be competitive in an olympic class in 2016 is actually very narrow.

The star has been voted out before, and then come back via the back door. Only a brave man would bet that there will definitiely not be a star class in 2016, especially as the Brazillians do not win loads of Olympic medals in any sport, and the star is one of their very best chances.
 
flaming said:
...Currently, the range of weights / shapes that would be competitive in an olympic class in 2016 is actually very narrow...
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And age range now very narrow too with the loss of the keelboat - has become a young and strong person's Olympics now as far as sailing is concerned (maybe the cat opens the age/strength a bit?).
 
dancrane said:
What IS this catamaran you gents have heard will be returning? Is it the Tornado again?
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It is only described as to be a mixed two crew multihull, to be decided in 2012 for the 2016 Olympics.

Given it is to be mixed sexes I suspect that it is unlikely to be the Tornado, at least not with its current increased sailplan.
 
The mixed format is a little odd, isn't it? I mean, it's pretty well unique at olympic level. No mixed 400m relay teams, are there? Though there's no obvious (to me) reason why there aren't.

Could be interesting though. Aren't we likely to end up with amazingly skilled, petite Dame McArthur types on the helm, and Andre the giant, seven feet out on the wire for righting forces?

Why shouldn't there be mixed 470 teams? Both sexes use them at Olympic level anyway.

Did someone say there'll be a women's 2-handed skiff, too? What'll that be?
 
OK, I sort of see your point of view but if you actually look objectively at the Star, it's a bit odd really. It's a daft shape, the underwater profile is only matched for stupidity by the Flying 15, the mast is terribly fragile, you sail it on it's ear with a gorilla with his arse in the water on the end of a piece of string, you can't get under the boom, and downwind you put the rig into a totally ridiculous configuration. I know no other boat that you would sail in such a daft way...you just think it would somehow be better if they just said "OK, put a kite on it".

I don't think that many non-sailors would understand what on earth is going on, or look at a Star crew with his arse in the drink, or stood on the foredeck and think "mmm, that looks fun, I'd like to try that". With a 49er, or even a Laser, people can either look at the speed an excitement (niner), or think about the attainability of the class (Laser).

I, personally, would much rather that archaic stuff like the Finn gave way to something more exciting like a Musto, air-rowing was banned or binned, and the keelboat was bigger, something like a 1720 or Melges that would keep costs reaonable, be more exciting to watch, and have a bigger "team". I do think that the women's skiff is a great idea and will do wonders for getting people of both sexes into the sport.
 
Lots of what you say, makes good sense.

But...may you rot, for your opposition to the Finn! It's such a great looker, and have you seen the Youtube, where a champion Finnster takes a hot young interviewer out in a breeze? Here it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ouum7gYx8s&feature=related (Better mute it if you don't speak Spanish, (or it may well be Portuguese))

...makes me think I'd be better off taking girls out in a butch singlehander's boat, rather than trying to persuade mademoiselle to help in a three-sail boat...to sit here, or there, and pull this, push that...they don't like it either. Much better if they can just sit and look cute. And on the same line of thought, I just love what's said about the self-balers in the Finn dinghy...that they're there to let the blood out! :D

What a tragic day it'll be if the toughest guys at sea ever have to give up the dinghy class that really tests them, and instead go flitting about in featherweight skiffs with adjustable wings! The 'Always-Ultra' singlehander? :mad:
 
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