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Change or die...

Posted 10 months, 3 days ago

Change or die...
Okay, so it's pretty obvious that I really don't like the Olympic classes and certainly within the polite whispering corridors of power in sailing I am both despised and considered extremely left field. However, I will keep on saying my thoughts because I believe that for far too long sailing has always been decided on by people totally out of touch with reality who are only concerned with making themselves look good - very few of these committee members, be they ISAF, the IOC or the national authorities, do the job because they passionately care about the sport or its sailors, they do it to further themselves. I think sailing in the Olympics should have the absolute "wow" factor and should astound sofa-bound viewers and inspire them to come and have a go at our great sport. That is my fundamental belief - let's take the captive audience every four years and showcase just how far we've come. Can we do that with boats like the Star, Finn, 470, Yngling etc etc..."No" is my answer. We're not showcasing the sport at all - we're actually doing a massive dis-service to the sport and this is proven by the senior journalists who are forced to trot out the usual trite articles every Olympic year that come under the banner of "personal interest" or in laymans terms: "three blondes in a boat", "Israel surfs to victory" etc etc.... We need to inspire the press to write about the sport as a 'sport' and give them absolutely no doubt that the days of the middle-class, white buffoon rahing it up in posh yacht clubs drinking gin and tonic is a tale of yore. This has to become a proper sport again - reclaim the adventurous, aspirational nature and embrace the new. By new I mean throwing the windward/leeward doctrine out of the window, let's push the athletes to the limit with bigger sai areas, throw the rules book out of the window and let kinetics take us to new levels of sporting prowess, bring in the foilers, go totally multi-media with head cams and onboard cams, let's throw this open to the call of the wild and get some boats in and sailors in that are true athletes....I tell you, within fifteen years these generations will take sailing to unbelievable new levels and I'll be happily sitting in my stuffy old yacht club, smoking my cigar and quietly smirking as the left-field becomes the centre ground.  Full Story »

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