Cut and paste from
http://www.hobieclass.com/?Page=8462Paul Pascoe, Tuesday, 1 December 2009
The following report contains personal opinions following a few days of reflection after returning from the ISAF Annual Conference in Korea. As Chairman of the Multihull Commission, there were some discussions that will remain confidential, but the major issues were all on the table for everyone to see. Commissions generally meet in private, but most of the Multihull Commission meeting was held in open discussion with multihull enthusiasts, and two major manufacturers representatives were also present.
ISAF Commissions report to the ISAF Executive and exist solely to make recommendations to the Executive. The output of Commissions is not generally made public, although it is would be very obvious to anyone what the Multihull Commission may have recommended. The question now for us all is ‘what do we need to do to get there?’
Overview
The participants at the meeting of the Multihull Commission in Korea concentrated on three subjects:
* Positioning for reintroduction of a multihull for the 2016 Olympics
* Retention of the multihull in the ISAF Youth Worlds
* Possibility of a new pinnacle event for off-the-beach multihulls
While the Olympics directly involves only a very small number of sailors, the dropping of the multihull from the Olympics has had a significant flow on effect that has already seen the dropping of youth programs in some countries, and the Multihull Commission views the reintroduction of one or two multihull disciplines in 2016 as their single number one priority. The top end of the multihull world is doing well with the America’s Cup, iShares Cup, and even in the last few days, the Groupama 3 attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy. However, off-the-beach multihulls are suffering as a result of multihulls being dropped from the Olympics.
2016 Olympics
There has been a lot of anticipation about the work that has been done and the recommendations that are to come from the Olympic Commission. Therefore any recommendations from the Multihull Commission prior to the releasing of the Olympic Commission’s report would be premature, and given that their final report will not be tabled until the mid year meeting in 2010 the Multihull Commission can realistically only discuss possible scenarios.
The Olympic Commission was setup partly as a reaction to the decision to drop the multihull, and the realisation that a class by class vote for the Olympics provided a very short term and disjointed approach, sometimes within unintended consequences, such as the multihull decision. Their brief is not just limited to “which classes”, but a broader approach to firstly ensure that sailing meets the objectives of the IOC in an effort to ensure that the sport stays in the Olympic Games. For example, the IOC recommends that at least some Olympic positions be available through qualification by Continental Championships rather than being based entirely on World Championships, with the intention of reducing the cost for countries to qualify.
The Commission is also looking at sailing representation around the world compared to competitors at the Olympics and comparing it to IOC membership. For example, Africa has 53 IOC members and only 1 country represented in sailing across all classes at the 2008 Olympics. However, we know that there are many more countries who sail in Africa but for some reason they do not compete at Olympic level.
It is also looking at ways to increase the public appeal of the sport through television and hence improve the value proposition of the sport to the IOC television rights holders and their advertisers, i.e. the people who pay for the Olympics. The addition of the medal race was a big step forward in terms of television coverage, with some countries recording excellent TV ratings. For example, in the UK, sailing was the third highest rating sport. However, sailing is also an expensive sport to cover with the use of multiple helicopters, on water camera boats, etc.
There is also a strong view within ISAF that the ten medals should be split between men and women. With this in mind, we need to be ready to offer not only a Men’s multihull but also a Women’s multihull. Alternatively, if only one multihull discipline is available, it would probably be an Open discipline and therefore the boat selected would need to offer women a reasonable chance of competing, probably as a mixed crew.
One other factor to be considered is the relationship between the Youth boat and the Olympic boat and these two should be considered as a unit, not in isolation. In other disciplines the jump from Youth to Olympic boat is quite modest, i.e. 420 to 470, Radial to Laser full rig, 29er to 49er. Whichever multihulls are under consideration should continue in this vein, and provide an incremental step from Youth boat to Olympic boat. Also, if there were to be a Women’s Multihull event, it would be ideal if the Youth multihull was also the Women’s multihull, in much the same way that the Laser Radial covers both disciplines for Youth & Olympic Women. This provides some economy of scale for manufacturers and MNAs as well as concentrating fleets at the local level.
There is also the issue of provided boats, and this concept is gaining popularity as the success of the Laser has shown that this concept provides a level playing field for all nations at the Olympics, and instantly removes any need for potentially expensive development programs.
Some other aspects of the Olympics that were being discussed at the meetings were:
* The impact of Continental Qualifying events for the 2016 Olympic Games
* A strategic approach to the various “World” Events, e.g. World Cup, ISAF World Championships, Class World Championships.
* The feeling that “disciplines” need to be decided further in advance than they currently are to allow manufacturers time to develop potential boats, and to allow some degree of certainty of which type of sailing will be in future Olympics
Each of these are being addressed by various groups, but we will have to wait until the Olympic Commission presents their recommendations at the May meeting to see how significant they see each of these issues.
So with the above information as background, the Multihull Commission considered the following scenarios and whether or not there are suitable boats currently available:
1) A single multihull open to Men & Women.
2) A separate Mens and Womens multihull, with the Womens boat also doubling as a Youth boat, and possibility of small/big rigs with a common platform
The Commission discussed the various options and also whether some sort of trial would be appropriate for either of the two scenarios. The members of the Commission had a very good in-private discussion, where we each took off our “class hats” and discussed what we felt would be the best options if a vote on the 2016 Olympics had been taken this year. It was all purely speculative as it will probably be a few years yet before this becomes necessary by the Council.
One important role that the Commission can play immediately is in the education of MNA Executives and Council members. The country representatives in each country are generally not aware of the multihull world, the types of boats available, the weight requirements, gender split, etc. For example, from the background information above, it quickly becomes obvious that one of the F18 classes would seem to fit the bill for an Open or Men’s multihull. What we need to do then is to collect information on spread of boats around the world, and more importantly the height, weight, age and gender of sailors at World Championships to show the competitiveness primarily of different weights and genders. This also holds true for any other type of boat we consider to be suitable.
The possibility of selecting one of the F18 classes for the Olympics is a serious consideration, but would have to be done carefully. Olympic selection is often detrimental to a class at club level, as the full-time sailors take their sailing to a new level of professionalism that club sailors just cannot match. In the past this often meant not only that the Olympic sailors were full-time athletes with professional coaching, but had at their disposal large development budgets that meant that even 1 or 2 year old boats were not competitive. Hopefully this development component would not be an issue with any new multihull, including the Tornado, if their one design sails are approved. The Laser class, the first manufacturer’s class to be introduced into the Olympics, does not seem to have been hurt at club level, and in fact has cemented it’s place even more firmly. It is hoped that if a manufacturer’s multihull were introduced then it would not be adversely affected.
The F18 Class Association is understandably hesitant that one of their classes may be selected and that it would be detrimental to the rest of the class. The alternative is to come up with a new “Olympic only” boat from one of the major manufacturers. However, to be gender and media friendly, it would probably be a 16 - 18 foot boat, with twin trapezes and a spinnaker, so to have such a close rival that was not an F18 would also be not desirable. To date, the F18 class events have welcomed professional Tornado sailors who have benefited by earning an income from the major manufacturers. Ideally this would continue with the Olympic sailors sailing the Olympic boat in World Cup events funded by their MNAs, and then potentially sailing a different manufacturer’s boat at open events such as Texel or an open F18 Worlds.
The debate amongst multihullers will be long, but hopefully informed and civilised, but the first item is to get a multihull, any multihull, back into the Olympics as the knock-on effect to all sailors and manufacturers is significant.
ISAF Youth World Championships
The discussion regarding the Youth Worlds has been continuing since 2007 when the multihull discipline was first dropped from the Olympics. It has always been felt that MNA’s may find it difficult to justify sending teams if they did not have a pathway to an Olympic Class. Fortunately, the Youth World Championship Sub-Committee subsequently ratified the current events and equipment for the forthcoming championships including the multihull in each event for the next three years. However we must continue to make sure that we have significant numbers at the Youth event and keep pressure on the Youth committee to retain the multihull in this event.
Pinnacle Event
There was much discussion about whether we need to replace the Olympics with another headline event. The options discussed were:
* World Cup – adding a multihull to the current World Cup circuit
* A new pinnacle event, e.g. a combined Worlds, outside of ISAF events
* 2011 ISAF World Championships
World Cup – this would be difficult to achieve as it would require convincing all the current event organisers. Even if agreement could be reached, it was felt that very few teams would travel to these events which would therefore become more of a local event, and potentially not a good showing for multihulls when compared to well funded international teams competing in Olympic Classes.
A new event – The discussion revolved around the idea of a combined event with some or all of A Class, Tornado, F18, Hobie 16 types of major classes. However the thinking was that in less than 2 years time we believe we will be back into the Olympics, and therefore back into the World Cup in 3 years time. Therefore, we are only looking for a short term pinnacle event. As most of these classes plan several years in advance, it would probably be at least 3 years before anything along these lines came about and would therefore be of little value.
2011 ISAF World Championships – This event is being run in Australia, and the CEO of the organising authority, John Longley, was in Korea. Discussions with John suggested that he would be supportive of a multihull, but that space was already a problem so it would probably need to be run as a precursor to the main event. The event is detailed in the ISAF Regulations as Olympic Classes only, so we would need to work around that with some clever wording. This would probably be a provided boat event, so then there the are the issues of: which boat; who supplies the boats; and whether or not competitors will travel to an event that is probably not a World Championship and may end up being a bit of a sideshow to the main event. If we don’t think that people will travel to the event, then should we put on a second class show or should we rely on our existing, Tornado, F18, A Class, Hobie 16 Worlds as the showcase events and invite ISAF Council members, perhaps as members of the Jury (several Council members are also IJs). Then again, there will be significant amount of television time, and if the multihull event is the only event during the lead up to the main event, we could attract excellent exposure.
Better Marketing or existing pinnacle events – Another view is that our current events are sufficient and that trying to cram in another event is not necessary, but what is necessary is that we market our existing events better to MNAs and voting Council members.
Looking back
There was very little discussion about the events of the last two years, only to note that realistically we lost the vote in 2007 when the multihull discipline was voted out and any efforts to overturn this initial decision were going to be difficult. The most recent vote of the IOC not to allow the 11th medal has to be seen in light of the fact that all requests from all sports for additional medals were rejected by the IOC other than for Boxing where they were given medals specifically for the first ever Women’s events for their sport. In the closed session of the Commission, there was a more open discussion about why we polled so poorly in 2007 and what we as a community need to do to change this in two years time.
Looking forward
In my opinion, what we need to do is:
* Monitor not only the recommendations of the Olympic Commission, but also try and gauge the level of acceptance of these recommendations by the voting members of the Council
* Provide information to MNA’s and Council members directly about what multihulls are out there, who sails them in terms of countries, gender, weight etc.
* Market our existing events to MNA’s and Council members
* Keep turning up in numbers to ISAF meetings and push our position at every opportunity.
