From The Daily Sail:
Rules and regs
We take a look at the ongoing situation with the Olympic multihull and women's skiff
Last week ISAF announced they would be re-visiting two contentious decisions made back in November last year at their Annual conference. With the IOC reducing athlete participation across the board at the Olympic Games, sailing was forced to remove one event from the Olympic line-up for 2012. Due to this the ISAF Council were charged with making the decision of what event would be removed as well as which events would take place at the Games in London. The ISAF Council, at that stage, made two major decisions: Firstly to remove the Double Handed Multihull event from the Olympics, secondly, to switch the Women’s Three Person Keelboat event to Women’s Match Racing event in favour of the Women’s Two Person High Performance Dinghy event (Women’s Skiff).
Immediately after this decision was made by the Council there was a great deal of public outcry, predominantly by the multihull community. Almost instantly after the meeting details emerged of a last minute change to the voting procedure. Essentially this change was from a situation where the ISAF Council voted for which events they want to see in the Olympics to voting for which events they would like to see OUT of the Olympics. At first glance this may not seem like a radical departure but in fact it made a significant difference to the way in which the votes were cast, making the whole procedure more tactical. If you consider someone who was going to vote for all classes except the Laser, for example, a change to voting for which class to remove makes this a wasted vote as the Laser is (almost) definitely in. Instead of wasting their vote this voter then is forced to decide on a class they want to remove other than the Laser.

Before getting into the immediate issues we do still have to look at one more debate that has been taking place over recent months and that is what is deemed to qualify as urgent and what is not. The RYA stuck their head above the parapet in early December 2007, officially calling for an ISAF re-vote. A letter was sent to ISAF from the RYA in addition to being copied to every voting MNA (Member National Authority) in the World. The letter called for a re-evaluation of the 2012 Olympic events to be voted on at the ISAF’s mid-year meeting this year. The Australians and the French both followed suit and sent similar requests to ISAF. However, ISAF made the announcement that these submissions were not deemed as ‘urgent’ and therefore would not be discussed in May in compliance with regulation 1.6(b) of the ISAF regulations:

1.6 Subject to the provisions of Regulations 2.3, submissions or proposals shall be received at the ISAF Secretariat in respect of:

(b) the Mid-Year meeting or other meetings, not less than eight weeks before the meeting at which it is considered. Only urgent submissions may be considered at a Mid-Year meeting. The Executive Committee shall determine whether a submission is urgent. (The provisions of this section do not apply to submissions or proposals brought forward under Regulation 1.8 and 16.1.2);

In essence then ISAF were holding off debating the issue until November 2008. However, as Rod Carr explained to TheDailySail at the time of the RYA’s submission: “As it says in the letter, we need the ISAF to defer telling the IOC what the events are,” he explained. “The IOC should be informed by March and we are saying, write to them and say ‘we request permission to defer announcing our events.’ I can’t believe, this far out from the [2012] Olympics that is something the IOC would refuse.”

It later came to light that this decision had been deferred by ISAF until later this year. As we are now aware, the ISAF are now discussing the issue of a re-vote at the mid-year meeting in May. So have the MNA (Member National Authority) and Class Association suggestions now been deemed ‘urgent’? The answer is they have not. Instead the ISAF Executive Committee have submitted their own submission - urgent submission M06-08 below:

Proposal:
That Council reaffirm their decision on the 2012 Olympic Events made in November 2007 by a simple majority vote.

Upon reaffirmation, the matter will be concluded and all submissions made whether accepted as urgent or not urgent, will be considered to have been dealt with. Should Council vote not to reaffirm the decision, two separate votes will then follow:

1. Should the selected events for the Men be changed – A majority of two thirds will be required to effect any change as per Regulation 16.1.3 (a).

2. Should the selected events for the Women be changed – A majority of two thirds will be required to effect any change as per Regulation 16.1.3 (a). In case one or both of the votes under 1 and 2 above achieve the required majority, the ‘new’ decisions on the list of events for the 2012 Olympic Events shall be made in November 2008 and submissions on the events can be made in accordance with Regulation 1.

Current Position:
See above.

Reason:
Due to the degree of correspondence since the Council decision in November 2007 plus the submissions lodged by 15 MNA and 2 Class Associations, the Executive submit that Council be requested to reaffirm their decision on the events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition made in November 2007. This will then bring to a close any concerns over the Council decision.

In case one or both of the votes under 1 and 2 above achieve the required majority, submissions on the events can be made in accordance with Regulation 1. This would include the submissions made for the Mid-Year Meeting which were deemed not urgent, which will become ordinary submissions received before the 1 August submission deadline.

Here we can clearly see the wording from ISAF stating that this vote is to ‘reaffirm’ their November vote. This wording shows a pressure from the Executive Committee onto the ISAF Council to uphold the position voted on in November last year. It has also been pointed out that instead of discussing each or any of the 17 submissions made to ISAF by 15 MNAs and two class associations, ISAF are ignoring much of the pressure applied and having a small vote that will overrun all of the other submissions.

However, much of this is speculative and it is a simple case of wording for the most part. Even the fact that the 17 submissions are not being taken into account by ISAF and only one single submission about a reaffirmation is being debated, seems like the best move in terms of efficiency.

Another major worry that brought to our attention by some members of the multihull community is the wording of both the urgent submission by ISAF and their Regulations. In urgent submission M06-08 it states that:

1. Should the selected events for the Men be changed – A majority of two thirds will be required to effect any change as per Regulation 16.1.3 (a).
2. Should the selected events for the Women be changed – A majority of two thirds will be required to effect any change as per Regulation 16.1.3 (a).

Here is regulation 16.1.3(a):

16.1.3 Except as provided in Regulation 16.1.4:
(a) Decisions made by Council under 16.1.1 (b) may only be overturned with a vote in favour of two thirds of all Council members entitled to vote.

‘Entitled to vote’ is the key here as, in effect, it means any Council member not attending the meeting (to be held in Qingdao) or abstaining from voting effectively becomes a vote against both the multihull and the women’s skiff. This does start to make the voting procedure look like an increasingly uphill struggle. However, a quick review of the minutes from the last two mid-year meetings shows only one voting member of the ISAF Council sent apologies for not attending, so in effect this is a moot point.

Essentially then the difficulty now for the multihull and women’s skiff community is that ISAF are, at this stage of the procedure, doing everything right. There have been no official complaints about the manner in which the vote was made in November last year. The RYA, for example, were very clear on this point and Rod Carr confirmed their position. “The first thing that I want to point out is that [the vote] was a legitimately, legally made decision,” he explained in December. “We are not challenging the legality of it. We are challenging the rightness of it.” Given this the ISAF are right to make it an uphill struggle. They must have a vote to reaffirm their decision and there must then be an overwhelming (two thirds) majority for the decision to be changed or else we will go through exactly the same problems every year we have to change Olympic classes.

The difficulty for us here is we would like to see a women’s skiff in the Games and the multihull returned. However, in ISAF’s eyes, and legally, the decision has already been made. The debate at the mid-year meeting could well change things but as in most walks of life once the decision has been made and the ball is rolling it is very, very difficult to stop it.

ISAF Mid Year meeting submissions, here.
ISAF Regulations, here.
ISAF Constitution, here.