I haven't checked in for a few days, so sorry if this has been posted already - I haven't read everything tonight. It is from the UK website "The Daily Sail" - You will see that at least the Irish were honest <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

The Daily Sail

*A look at the Council
Why were ISAF able to make such a bad decision?*

Two and a half weeks ago we saw the ISAF, at their Annual Conference in
Estoril, make the huge decision not to include a women?s high
performance skiff in the 2012 Games, to swap women?s keelboat fleet
racing for match racing and to drop the multihull from competition.

Just how unpopular this proved to be quickly became evident with much of
the sailing community expressing its distaste and often anger at the
outcome. Perhaps now this feeling has begun to dissipate a little it is
worth taking some time to investigate just how an unpopular decision was
able to be made.

A key point in the process that riled many was that at the Conference
the ISAF Events Committee met the day before the ISAF Council were due
to make their decision and voted on a list of suggested events. The
Events Committee is made up of experts in Olympic sailing and classes
and with the brief that they had to drop two classes to be replaced by
one ? the women?s high performance skiff - they came up with a list many
were happy with. Effectively they chose to get rid of the two keelboat
classes. Their decision was then passed onto the ISAF Council who
appeared to completely ignore the expert advice, making up their own mind.

Before we further blast the ISAF for their decision it is worth taking a
moment to understand who exactly makes up the ISAF Council and who
therefore has a vote in the Olympic Events that are selected for the
Games. The Council itself is made up of one President, seven
Vice-Presidents, 28 MNA (Member National Authority) representatives, one
Offshore representative, one ISAF Classes Committee Representative and
one Women?s representative. Essentially, then, the biggest contributors
to the council are MNA reps. In theory, if you are a member of your
national sailing authority like the RYA, you should be able to have some
say about the direction of your MNA and so the way in which they vote.
But of course if this were actually the case, clearly we would not now
be in a situation with so many disgruntled sailors.

Recently several national authorities have issued statements citing
their views about the ISAF events selection. These shed much light on
one of the key issues involved, none more so than the recent Irish
Sailing Association statement, where they are very open about how they
went about their decision making process: /Although we have had some
Multihull Olympic campaigns in the past, Ireland has never succeeded in
qualifying for entry to the Olympic Games in this class. There are
currently no Irish sailors engaged in Multihull Olympic campaigns and no
junior or developmental programmes which would feed into future
campaigns, hence the decision for our vote in favour of the other men's
classes.

So in a nutshell; national authorities vote in a way that ensures
maximum potential Olympic success for their own nation. Why would they
do anything else?

With such a system in place, where the majority of the votes arguably
have the future of the sport on the Olympic stage as a secondary focus,
it is little surprise we get decisions that are far from representative
of the sailing community as a whole.

Another item that has come to the fore in the last couple of weeks is a
document called the ?Olympic Programme Commission Review of the Olympic
Programme and the Recommendations on the Programme of the Games of the
XXIX Olympiad, Beijing 2008.? In this article the International Olympic
Committee suggests, with regards to the reduction of sailing classes,
that: ?/the Commission believes these reductions could be made through
the exclusion of keelboat sailing events from the Programme of the Games
of the XXIX Olympiad, which would also reduce the construction and
operational costs and complexity/.? This is no hidden document and the
IOC discussed this with the ISAF back when the events where being
considered for the 2008 Olympics. We have to therefore assume one of two
things: either the ISAF Council did not know or somehow forgot about
this view from the IOC or, perhaps even worse, knew about it and chose
to totally ignore their suggestions.

Clearly one could argue that the IOC is not as informed as the ISAF
about sailing, but in honesty this is an irrelevance. If the IOC itself,
the overall architects of the Games, suggest the keelboat classes need
to be removed, then surely the ISAF can only realistically vote to keep
them in if they have some fantastic reason to do so. But given that the
Events Committee also chose to remove the keelboats from the Olympics,
it seems this fantastic reason does not exist.

When it comes to the future of sailing in the Olympics surely the best
thing that our sport can do is to please the IOC by taking on board
their suggestions and increasing the spectacle and media and public
appeal of our sport at this, one of it?s most public platforms.

If we consider it is of utmost importance to take heed of the IOC?s
comments ? particularly as the majority of the ISAF?s income is
generated by being an Olympic sport ? then ignoring their suggestions
seems very unwise course indeed. However, the next interesting point
within the same document is perhaps even more startling.

The inclusion of two men?s singlehanded dinghy events for the 2012
Games, has caused a bit of a stir among some sailors. This is something
that is theoretically new for the 2012 Olympics as, up until now, the
Finn has been categorised as an open single hander. This used to be the
role of the Laser, but with the introduction of the Radial as the
Women?s Singlehander this notion is become redundant. However, clearly
no women were reasonably going to stand a chance of being competitive in
the Finn so that event has been changed to the Men?s Heavy weight Single
Handed Dinghy, while the Laser remains as the men?s single handed dinghy.

Given this name change it is a worry to find contained within the
previously mentioned IOC document a statement which reads: ?/Weight
category events should not be allowed, except for the combat sports and
for weightlifting/.? Arguably then a heavy weight men?s event is again
totally ignoring an IOC edict - worrying indeed.

So what can done about these problems? Here it gets difficult. The list
of issues is large, but the key areas, we feel, are as follows: Firstly
the majority of the voting members of the ISAF Council, ie the MNAs,
clearly have their own vested interests in the survival of certain
classes, based primarily on the make-up and success of their own Olympic
sailing squads rather than the development of sailing in the Games for
the overall good of our sport. They should have a say, certainly, but
not the majority vote. Secondly the ISAF needs to be clearer about their
motives, particularly with respect to the IOC. They cannot vote to keep
classes that have been advised to be dropped by the IOC without a very
good reason. If there were and/or is such a good reason ? so far none
have come to light - this should be effectively communicated with the
sailing community and the press.

We would suggest the voting be broadened significantly to take in all
the current members of the ISAF Council but also all members of the ISAF
Athletes Commission (made up of current or recent Olympic Athletes) with
anyone currently campaigning for the Olympics unable to vote for their
own event or class. In addition to this we feel the Event Committee?s
findings should also count towards the voting process. Either the Events
Committee should be given significant voting poweror perhaps by them
being represented with ten votes for each class they choose. Of course
there are always going to be those with their own agenda but increasing
the number of votes should at least go some way to averaging this out.

Finally why not have a compulsory lecture for all of those voting, that
is open to the press and public, with information about what the IOC
have recently said, a debate about what is important for the future and
a presentation by each class association.