Rio 2016 equipment - our view

Keelboats out - mixed multihull and women's skiff in

The ISAF Mid-Year Meeting held at the end of last week in St Petersburg, saw an acceptable if not necessarily logical decision made on the events for the Olympic Games in Rio 2016. However the meeting did nothing to allay the widely-held view that ISAF, and in particular the four yearly decision over the sailing equipment for the Olympics, remains a political quagmire.

Incredibly, following the recommendations by the ISAF Events Committee to dispense with the men’s keelboat and women’s match racing in favour of a mixed catamaran and a women’s skiff, so the Executive Committee – that is the top echelon within ISAF - attempted to stage an 11th hour coup at the end of last week by recommending keelboats at the expense of...get this... the skiffs. No one saw that coming. It seemed as if all the hard work and subsequent recommendations made by Phil Jones and his team at the now disbanded ISAF Olympic Commission had never happened. Our esteemed colleague Andy Rice reports that the sailing world was just one vote away from the skiffs getting flicked from Rio 2016. If ever there was a good reason for the voting infrastructure within ISAF to be raised to the ground...

As to the ultimate outcome, it is not ground breaking but equally not a complete disaster. The loss of the men’s keelboat will detract from Olympic sailing – particularly given that Brazil, the host nation for 2016, is so strong in this class with, for example, two Olympic legends, Torben Grael and Robert Scheidt, gunning for the spot for London 2012. The Star does succeed in attracting some of the ‘big names’ from our sport, however as an Olympic discipline it is too expensive. Of course it could have been replaced by a cheaper more contemporary strict one design keelboat - a two man Laser SB3 or Elliott 6, for example - but we doubt that would have had the same draw. Star sailors like the challenge of Olympic sailing’s oldest boat with all its inherent quirks and complexities, not to mention its lengthy history. The prospect of sailing a more modern average white keelboat we suspect might have been less attractive.

At the Nespresso Cup, Jochen Schuemann, who holds two Olympic Golds and a silver in the Soling and another Gold in the Finn shared his opinion: “I am not an Olympic sailor anymore, but I would be very disappointed to lose the last real keelboat in the Olympics. I think somehow the Olympics should represent sailing and having no keelboat at all is incorrect. To be honest I don’t know why they kicked out the Soling and created women’s match racing. It was a big surprise when the Soling got kicked out which I think was one of the best formats - to have a qualifier in open fleet racing and then the top boats go into match racing. That format was more than perfect and it was very exciting. So it is not well managed what we are doing there.”

Being a past medallist, Schuemann was pleased that the Finn had made it through, but was equally surprised...as we were.

Last year the ISAF Olympic Commission made its recommendations on how sailing needed to re-organise itself if it was to avoid the very real threat of it being be dropped as an Olympic discipline (read more about this here). This boiled down to on the one hand making the sport more exciting and engaging for spectators, TV and media while its global take-up needed to be substantially increased with more nations at least having the ability to compete, even if they didn’t make it all the way through to the Games themselves.

Clearly the Laser, Laser Radial and to a lesser extent the 470 are the types of boat that fulfil this latter requirement, being relatively cheap or at least being two of the dinghy classes with the greatest take-up around the world. Boats such as the skiffs and multihulls fulfil the former. The Finn doesn’t really fall into either category, although, certainly there is a need for some vehicle within Olympic sailing where blokes who are more substantial than stick insects can compete. We would have liked to have seen some sort of one design foiler developed for bigger men in place of the Finn.

We are extremely pleased that the women’s skiff has made it through finally after, once again for reasons unfathomable, it was dropped at an equivalent time to this as events for London 2012 were being chosen. Finally there is a modern exciting high performance boat for women to compete in, although one wonders if this won’t lead to an exodus of the old hands from the 470 Women’s class after Weymouth next year.

It is also great that the multihull has returned – although that it was ever dropped in the first place once again demonstrates what a farce the selection of Olympic sailing events is at present. Over the last decade there has been a huge upturn of participation in catamaran sailing. Most recently of course the America’s Cup has gone that way, but the statistic that stands out to us is that of the F18. Despite F18 catamarans costing new in the order of 15-20,000 Euros and having 180 berths available, their World Championships are regularly oversubscribed with some of the top nations having to hold selection trials. How many other classes can claim numbers like that?

We remain unconvinced that having the multihull as a mixed discipline is a good idea. With the exception of Roland Gaebler, none of the former Tornado Olympic sailors we have spoken to find it as interesting an option as single sex boats. Perhaps by the time of the event selection for 2020 catamaran sailing will have come of age enough to allow there to be both men's and women's multihull classes.

While it is easy to knock ISAF for their poor decisions and in particular their poor decision-making process, it is hard to conceive a solution that would see a body that is suitably autonomous able to make choices in the best interest of the sport rather than in the interests of classes and free from the bias of ISAF member national authorities.

From here the next step will be the trials and evaluation of the new women's skiff, the multihull and the toss-up between boards and kites, or, as RYA Olympic Manager Stephen Park wryly tweeted, whether Göran Petersson can pulled the same stunt that his predecessor Paul Hendersen did when he got the Star re-instated for Sydney 2000 by simply talking the IOC into adding another class to the sailing roster.