Youth Cats get RYA thumbs up

The RYA Council has reviewed their stance on Youth and Olympic event submissions

At its meeting at the Royal Thames Yacht Club yesterday (Wednesday 3 October) the RYA Council further discussed submissions from the RYA to the 2007 ISAF Conference relating to future events in both the ISAF World Youth Sailing Championships and the Olympic Games.

During the meeting, Chris Atkins, Chairman of the RYA Racing Committee, revisited the two submissions with the RYA Council in light of the recent strength of feeling expressed towards them by the UK catamaran community.

RYA Council maintains its belief that catamaran racing is an important part of the sport of sailing in the UK, and accepts that the intent of these submissions was not communicated as well as it could have been to relevant stakeholders within the UK sailing fraternity.  It believes, nevertheless, that its submissions are important in order to initiate strategic discussions within ISAF, the body responsible for the global direction of the sport and the final arbiter on which events are included at the ISAF Youth World Championships and the Olympic Games.

Following its meeting, RYA Council resolved to amend its submission relating to future events at the ISAF Youth World Championships. RYA Council believes these Championships should be as inclusive as possible, commensurate with them providing a pathway for youth sailors into Olympic events. RYA Council therefore believes that both double-handed trapeze dinghy racing and skiff racing should both be included in the Championships as these are included in the Olympic regatta. Therefore the amended submission now advocates the following events:

Boy’s one person dinghy
Girl’s one person dinghy
Boy’s two person dinghy
Girl’s two person dinghy
Boy’s windsurfer
Girl’s windsurfer
Open Multihull
Open two person high performance dinghy

On the RYA submission relating to the selection of events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition, Council resolved to continue with the submission in its current format, ie:

One person dinghy – Men
One person dinghy – Women
Two person dinghy – Men
Two person dinghy – Women
Two person, high performance dinghy – Men
Two person, high performance dinghy – Women
Windsurfing – Men
Windsurfing – Women
The final two events would be decided by the ISAF Council.

It was further agreed that the RYA would look to assist the multihull classes to establish a system to promote and generate multihull sailing for youths, along at the lines of its Team15 programme which attracts youngsters into windsurfing.

RYA personnel involved with both Racing and Sport Development are due to meet representatives of the catamaran community, including F18 International, the UK Tornado Class Association, and the UK Catamaran Racing Association, on Monday 8 October to discuss these issues and ways of developing this branch of sailing within the UK.