Here's the first 5 decisions made by the ISAF equipment committee regarding medal events for 2012 and how they will affect local sailors
1) Remove the Men's keel boat competition that is currently sailed in Stars. There are some local Star sailors, but they are unlikly to be affected by this change. They will still happlily sail against each other in their own events. Less CYA resources will go to Star sailors nationally, but they aren't getting much now anyway.
1) Remove the Men's keel boat competition that is currently sailed in Stars. There are some local Star sailors, but they are unlikly to be affected by this change. They will still happlily sail against each other in their own events. Less CYA resources will go to Star sailors nationally, but they aren't getting much now anyway.
2) Keep the Woman's match racing format that will be first sailed at the London games in 2012. I predict that since match racing meets the spectator and media friendly requirements of the IOC, the men will want to get in on the action as well. This may result in a mixed keel boat match racing event with both men and women. Locally I hope this trickles down to a local match race event. It seems like something the M242 fleet would be interested in.
3) Reintroduce a catamaran event. This event will be sailed with mixed teams of men and women. The concept of mixed sex events is unique to sailing. No other sport can do this on a level playing field. This is one of the things that will help keep sailing in the Olympics A lot of local fleets have mixed crews already, but this may result in some more respect for the crews that do this. Hopefully this will influence the high performance classes like the Volvo 70s.
4) Change the 470 event to a mixed teams event. The national level sailors are not happy about being required to break up the teams that they have spent years developing, but it will probably turn out for the best. IOC is not going to allow more medal events for sailing, so there have to be some changes. The athletes will probably accept this decision because it is better than having your event removed from the games as first the cats and now the Star have had to deal with. The 470 class has a direct effect on local sailing. The 420, its development class, is very actively sailed locally. I think it will be mostly positive as the class will probably get more exposure as they are breaking new ground and trying new things.
Continued in part III...
3) Reintroduce a catamaran event. This event will be sailed with mixed teams of men and women. The concept of mixed sex events is unique to sailing. No other sport can do this on a level playing field. This is one of the things that will help keep sailing in the Olympics A lot of local fleets have mixed crews already, but this may result in some more respect for the crews that do this. Hopefully this will influence the high performance classes like the Volvo 70s.
4) Change the 470 event to a mixed teams event. The national level sailors are not happy about being required to break up the teams that they have spent years developing, but it will probably turn out for the best. IOC is not going to allow more medal events for sailing, so there have to be some changes. The athletes will probably accept this decision because it is better than having your event removed from the games as first the cats and now the Star have had to deal with. The 470 class has a direct effect on local sailing. The 420, its development class, is very actively sailed locally. I think it will be mostly positive as the class will probably get more exposure as they are breaking new ground and trying new things.
Continued in part III...
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