Women and cats get poor deal ISAF make the 'wrong' decision again
On Wednesday last week, things were looking good at the ISAF Annual Conference in Estoril, Portugal. The Events Committee had met and made their recommendations to the ISAF Council as to which events they thought should be included in the 2012 Olympic Games. Essentially they voted in favour of removing the two keelboat classes and adding a high performance double handed dinghy for women. Although by no means a radical step it seemed as though ISAF were finally looking to the future and taking the appropriate steps to keep sailing in the Olympics. It was, then, with a heavy heart we reported on Friday, 9 November, the ISAF Council had chosen to ignore totally these recommendations. Instead they opted to keep the two keelboat events in – changing the women’s keelboat event from fleet racing to match racing – at the expense of the multihull and women’s high performance double hander. At best this can be seen as a conservative move, at worst a huge step backwards and the beginning of the end of sailing’s inclusion in the Olympic Games.
The first question that must be asked is exactly what is the point of the Events Committee and others existing? This group the ISAF itself claims to comprise experts, who were flown into Estoril and put up there in hotels. These experts were then asked to discuss the situation, share their informed views and to make their recommendations to the ISAF Council – who are not stated as experts in the ISAF press releases unlike the Events Committee. But then the expert recommendations are totally ignored. If this is the way ISAF are going to make major decisions, why bother having expert advisers at all? Why not just sit a group of aged blazers in a room and ask them to make all the decisions based on what they think is right, irrespective of the views of the rest of the international sailing community – for judging by Friday’s decision this seems to have been the case with the entourage of committees flown in to make the Council’s decision appear fair and even handed.
One of the best things we felt ISAF had done in recent years was to introduce two separate guidelines for a class to be included in the Olympics. Essentially these set out that events should either increase nation participation (cheap and accessible classes) or increase media interest (fast and exciting to watch). Although no one would question the strength of the Star as the men’s doublehanded keelboat it is difficult to see how it, or many other two person keelboats, would fit in with the above criteria.
Above: One of the contenders for the women's double handed high performance dinghy.
Perhaps you could argue that match racing for the women will be exciting, but when you consider it is at the expense of a high performance women’s dinghy it is clear which should have won. The removal of the multihull seems nothing short of idiotic. Here is an area of the sport that is arguably growing quicker than almost anything else - look at the F18s or even the more exotic A Class Worlds being held at the moment. It is fast, competitive and exciting to watch, but has now been removed.
It comes as a shock to be writing this article as we felt sure we would instead be contemplating which skiff would be best for the women’s high performance slot. As it turns out we are far from alone as the sailing world is in uproar about ISAF’s decision. A quick glance around other websites, blogs and forums and we struggle to find anyone who thought this to be a remotely positive move.
However, it is not just the writing community who are struggling to see the sense in this move. Cat sailing legend, Mitch Booth spoke to us from the A-Cat World Championships in Florida about the decision. “It has nothing to do with what is good or bad or right or wrong, it is just the politicians and their decisions,” he said. “That is why I have completely lost faith with the ISAF process and their management of the sport. I was heavily involved as a sailing advisor for the multihull re-evaluations about six or seven years ago. I have seen the sport from the administration view, from inside ISAF, and I have lost faith completely with their whole structure, hence why I do not go to the ISAF meetings anymore.”
Surely when an administration for a sport is getting this kind of reaction from their top sportsmen something has gone drastically wrong. Booth is not alone in his view. Many other sailors we have spoken to expressed their anger at the lack of vision shown by ISAF.
It is perhaps not surprising that the cat sailing community is currently the most angered by the events selection. “When you look at the council they are all older people and as a rule have all sailed Stars at some point,” commented GBR Olympic Tornado representative, Will Howden. “They don’t really want to break with tradition and I think that is a shame as it could well be the death of the sport.”
So what result is this likely to have on the catamaran community? Here is where debate begins to go in different directions, some saying it will not effect the community in any way, while others believe the loss of faith could be devastating. Howden believes the multihull fraternity will probably remain reasonably unaffected by the choice saying that only a handful of Olympic sailors are in the F18 class regularly so numbers should stay high. He does wonder, though, whether this might be the effective death of the Tornado. “When you look at most of the non-Olympians who have Tornados a lot of the reason they have them is because they want to go and race them internationally. That is probably not going to be all that popular now, certainly for the next few years,” he comments.
Others have a slightly different view. In his excellent blog (here) Rohan Veal wonders whether the lack of faith in ISAF will see the multihull community pulling away and setting up their own administration. This is certainly a possibility if ill feeling remains at this level as one has to ask exactly what is cat sailing getting from ISAF now it is out of the Olympics? This would be a dangerous thing to happen as suddenly there would be a clear route for any factions irritated by ISAF to splinter away causing the whole federation to fall apart.
Although the multihull’s exclusion from the Games is a shock what is perhaps worse is the severe blow that had been dealt to female sailing at this meeting. With equality between female and male events supposedly being important at the Olympics, why have we not seen a vote to overthrow the mid year meeting’s decision to have six male events and four female events? Surely five events each is the obvious way to go if increased female participation is a serious goal. “As I understood it, [ISAF] wanted to get as near as possible to a 50/50 split,” comments two time Olympic Gold medallist, Shirley Robertson. “To make a decision to have two men’s doubles and two men’s singles is not really progressing the sport in any way.”
Certainly if giving the women less events than the men was going to irritate them then so too was the exclusion of a women’s high performance double hander. We simply cannot understand this when clearly it would have been such a good thing for the sport. We were trying to think of a fair and balanced view to put across regarding this decision but the only reason we can see for such a choice is a general feeling within the ISAF Council that women are not up to sailing such a class. Perhaps it could be argued that getting a new class into the games is too difficult, although it really shouldn’t be.
The choice of swapping women’s fleet racing for match racing is, simply, ludicrous. Even women’s fleet racing in keelboats has had small numbers in the Olympics and on the international circuit, but female match racers represent an even smaller subset of this. Certainly if you are one of them life must be looking pretty good at the moment.
But numbers are not the only problem. “To think that they have gone back to match racing is crazy,” exclaims Robertson. “We have already seen match racing is very difficult to work for women, not just in terms of the Olympics where you can sort of see it working, but in terms of the whole circuit, it does not really fit in. We saw that it did not work for the men in Sydney. It was supposed to bring the media in and it did not. The final in 2000 was the most boring thing that I have seen on TV and that is not just my view, it is shared by a lot of people.”
Some might say that match racing will be good for the sport as it can reduce costs dramatically with boats being supplied for events, but Robertson maintains this is simply not the case. “It would be interesting to know how [ISAF] see it working. Are they going to select a boat or are they to be supplied? If the reason is to lower price then I do not think that they have really thought it through. If you are going to be match racing in different boats then you end up buying two of each for training. Then the rich countries just get better and better because they can buy more and more boats,” she points out.
This is not the only problem either. Robertson adds that with fleet racing in theory anyone can give it a go, but with match racing it is much more difficult as entry to regattas often involves invitations based on each individual sailor’s ISAF ranking.
Robertson also says that although the Yngling was a bit of a funny looking boat and was, to some extent brought to the Olympics out of blind panic - due to match racing being rejected the last time around and no other women’s keelboats existing in any sort of numbers at the time – it was still a good and technical class to sail. At least the Yngling had some sailors in it and many countries had spent money building up technical data and doing research and development. To swap this for match racing and effectively start again with a very similar discipline just feels like a badly judged short term solution. “I think you are making a decision about something that is not just six years in advance but much more. You can’t keep changing classes every four years. It is actually a long term decision that needs to be made and that has not happened,” Robertson concludes.
So once again ISAF have made all the right noises in the build up to Olympic event selection and once again they have managed to totally mess it up when it comes to crunch time. Still, perhaps all is not lost as two time Olympian, Simon Hiscocks, optimistically wrote in our feedback article (here) “There is hope....... the Laser could be the one person dinghy heavy, the Moth the one person dinghy, the 49er men and woman the two person dinghy…” Given the recent decisions ISAF have made, we are not holding our breath.
