The A class saw inclusion into the Olympics as their death knell to the class numbers worldwide (and they were probably right).
This was primarily due to what happened at the time when the Tornado was chosen for the Olympics.
To make an important correction here, it wasn’t really the Tornado that was selected, but the selection had been made that a cat representing the “B” class of catamaran was to be included into the Olympics and the Tornado was the cat that was then selected from a series of “trials” between several types of “B” class cats.
At that time the “B” class was the most innovative, experimental and largest growing class of cat in the world and the variety and numbers of different cats being built within it’s “box rule” was impressive. After the Tornado gained inclusion into the Olympics, the “B” class simply died and the only example to be seen for decades has been the Tornado.
Many multihull people over the years have stated (perhaps cynically, perhaps not) both privately and publicly, that the only reason the “B” class was included in the Olympics was (mono hull bias) trying to “kill” the growing numbers of cats being put on the water, and looking at the numbers historically, this was the overall effect (whether intentional or not) until someone called Hobie came along and attracted an entirely untapped market – people who had never sailed before!