Friday, August 11, 2006

Intergalactic Championship

In a comment to my post earlier today on World Championships (about ISAF rules on what constitutes a world championship and how some classes measure up against this rule), Tim asks a great question, "Just a thought but what would be the title of a championship that doesn't meet the requirements for a 'world championships'?"

The only answer I know is the one that is the title of this post. There a couple of examples at least of Intergalactic Championships.

Rick White and Mary Wells have been doing a great job of promoting the Hobie Wave class in the United States and nearby countries. A few years ago they tried to organize a Wave World Championship in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Mary tells what happened next in this thread on catsailor.com.
As far as us promoting it in the United States to get people to go to it, we were under intense pressure from ISAF and from US Sailing to change the name to something that would not imply in any way that it was a world championship. They suggested "Intergalactic," because, thankfully, ISAF has not yet extended its governing authorities beyond this planet. The only reason we knuckled under and briefly changed the name to Intergalactic was because we had a youth sailor coming to the event, and we did not want him to be disqualified from being able to race in ISAF youth events just because of participating in the (illegal) Wave Worlds.
Yes, ISAF will threaten to disqualify you from sailing in other ISAF events if you sail in a worlds that is not a worlds!

The other example is the Tech Dinghy, a single-handed class that originated at MIT back in the 1930s and is still actively raced there.
There are only a few other fleets scattered around the United Stated as far as I know. They also hold an Intergalactic Regatta, presumably for the same reason.

A quick Google confirms that the same solution has been chosen by the Soverell 33 and the San Juan 23 classes. Don't ask. I haven't a clue what they are either.

There may be other answers to Tim's question. Anybody know of any?

The other thing I don't know is has ISAF ever withdrawn the right to run World Championships from an existing class once it had granted that right? I don't know of any examples. Do you?

2 comments:

Tim Coleman said...

But surely you can only call it an intergalactic championships if you have competitors from at least six different galaxies? Or does it depend on the class, I'm sure that some boats are only sailed by alien life forms.

Tillerman said...

I'll email your question to the Equipment Committee at the Intergalactic Sailing Federation. It may take a time to get a reply though as their office is in the Andromeda galaxy which is about 2.9 million light years away. Check back here in 5.8 million years Tim and I'll post the answer.

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