Bondalucci said...
I reckon they need to head down this track.
You want an Olympic event to be a competition representative of the kind of windsurfing people do that actually keeps them into the sport.
At the Winter Olympics, the snowboarding "boardercross" is one of the most popular events among viewers.
- It's a race that's fast, combines exciting jumps, corners etc and of course provides thrills and spills!!
Not puddling around on massive sails in 6 kts (IMHO)
Fair call, but windsurfing is too small to make it into the Games on its own. So we need to be part of sailing.
And if we choose sailing classes based on "a competition representative of the kind of sailing people do" then we can work out what types of sailing most people do by looking at things like Yachting Australia's recent survey. Using rough percentages, it looks as if we would end up with an Olympic Games that has something like the following ten disciplines;
* 28 foot cruising yacht, mixed, no spinnaker;
* 28 foot cruising yacht, family crew only, no spinnaker
* 35 foot cruising yacht, male, no spinnaker;
* 22 foot cruising yacht, mixed, no spinnaker;
* trailable cruising yacht, mixed, no spinnaker;
* 25 foot cruiser/racer, family crew only, spinnaker.
* 33 foot offshore racing yacht, mixed, spinnaker;
* medium-performance two-person dinghy, male;
* medium-performance two-person dinghy,mixed;
* one person dinghy, male.
Go back to the '80s, when boards and cats were simpler and it wasn't just about planing and high performance, then things would have been different.
Obviously there's no way the Games would end up with those events, but that is something like a true reflection of what the average sailor does. The majority of them sail cruiser/racer yachts for run.
So we can't really say that the Olympic sport should represent the recreational sport too closely, or else we'd end up with lots of cruising yachts and (as mentioned before) the bike racers would be using city bikes and hybrids.
