Thursday, May 05, 2011

No Keelboats Allowed

According to Sail-World...

The meeting of the International Sailing Federation's Events Committee has just voted on its schedule of ten Events for the 2016 Olympic Sailing Regatta.

The report from the Committee will now go to the ISAF Council to be 'received' which then triggers a discussion and debate as to whether the Council endorse the Recommendation or amend it.

The list of 10 events is believed to be:

Mens and Womens Windsurfer (RS:X) and Kiteboard

Mens Singlehander (Laser)
Womens Singlehander (Laser Radial)

Mens HP Skiff (49er)
Womens HP Skiff (Evaluation Trial)

Mixed Multihull (Evaluation Trial) (One female, one male crew)

Mens Heavyweight Singlehander (Finn)

Mens Doublehander (Spinnaker) 470
Womens Doublehander (Spinnaker) 470

The outcome of the vote is that there will be no Keelboat event in the 2016 Olympics, if the recommendation is endorsed by the ISAF Council meeting tomorrow, Friday and Saturday.

Wow!

The Star is out.

The women's keelboat match racing is out.

The cat is back.



13 comments:

Baydog said...

I know a woman who that cat reminds me of.

I know a cat who reminds me of a woman.

Smilicus said...

No Keelers - now that is not gonna be fun nor fair, might rather watch the chess nationals then.

BUT the cats are back, yay, so that should keep the action going

Pat said...

Cats good, lack of keelboats divorces Olympics from a huge chunk of the sport.

tillerman said...

It ain't over yet. Apparently the Executive Committee of ISAF have now met and come out in favor of putting both keelboat classes back in at the expense of the two high performance skiff classes. I guess the Council will have the final say.

Anonymous said...

The Olympics mean many different things to many different people but i have always assumed that the majority of 'punters' associate sporting endeavour with youth and physical exertion. Hardly fits with knocking out the skiffs in favour of keel boats in my mind!

Poesje

Litoralis said...

I think it would make more sense to eliminate the 470 in favor of keeping the skiffs and the keelboats (Star and women's match racing keelboat). Isn't the 470 effectively just an precursor to modern high performance skiffs anyway?

tillerman said...

Definitely makes more sense. So probably will never happen.

Anonymous said...

Did the keel drop off the ISAF boat?

Dannie said...

No Keel boats? Have these fools forgotten what sailing is? Won't be worth watching

Pat said...

Guess the council decided that Olympic Sailing is "No country for old men" in banishing keelboats.

Tillerman said...

Exactly right Pat. I'm not sure who said it but the best summary of this issue I have heard is something along the lines of "Sailing is a lifetime sport. That doesn't mean that the Olympics is a lifetime event."

The Olympics (in every sport) is about the fittest, the fastest, the strongest... which primarily means the young.

Noodle said...

Cheer up! Paul Elvstrom was like sixty or something last time he was in the Olympics; Sailing the Tornado.

Tillerman said...

True Noodle. Which just goes to show that you don't need a keelboat in the Olympics to allow exceptional athletes to continue competing there even when they are no longer young.

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