You all seem to think everybody will go out and buy a Tiger,lets stop and think of the long term scenario.

At the moment there are a lot of pro's and semi pro's racing a number of different types because they are being paid to as a winning boat means market share. If the Tiger becomes the defacto boat ( as it will if selected as the olympic boat) do you think Hobie Corp is going to employ all those now redundant pro sailors as a gesture of goodwill. I don't think so and that will leave a lot of sailors looking for olympic sponsorship of which only the top 3 or 4 from a few countries will get. That will then mean a lot of top guns are going to be unemployed and not able to afford the costs of the olympic boat.

Guess what, a number of pro's will retire from the sport and thus there will be a lot less F18's about which in turn will mean less boats sold by all manufacturers including Hobie. Eventually we will get to the Marstrom tornado situation where very few boats are sold to a very select few with diminshing second hand availability.

All we have done by selling our soul to get Olympic status is to kill off our vibrant F18 class ( which is probably our biggest fleet ) to allow a few hopeful medalists in a once in 4 years competition.

My gut feeling is that we should be saying sorry but we don't want to get involved in the Olympics but pushing our own World Cup series ( let it be known that this is the Olympic medal of catamaran racing ) where there are opportunities for all in a class being strengthened by numbers and availability of good used second hand boats ( hand me downs from the Pro teams ).