You can't please all of the people all of the time, a cliché of which I'm sure ISAF are only too aware. Their proposed change of format for the Olympic Regatta has met with a mixed reaction, caught as they are between the demands of their twin masters, the International Olympic Committee and the sailing community
The vast majority of sailors were quite happy with the standard format of one discard (or two for the longer series raced by the 49ers) for the Olympic Regatta. But it's quite easy to see the IOC's point of view too, with their eye on making sport more televisually friendly. Of course we are always going to be on to a loser with our sport in this respect. Most of the time sailing is about as thrilling as watching a game of chess. But it is pretty hard to explain to the viewer that the Olympic Champion is already sitting ashore quaffing champagne - or in the case of our Blonde Ambition girls in the Yngling, getting their hair done for the medal ceremony - while the Silver and Bronze medals are still being decided.
Sailing really had to find a way of keeping the Gold medal undecided until the final race. Not that this new system guarantees that happening. Just to update you with the process if you haven't already read the reams of discussion about this subject on the web, this is what is now proposed:
- A 10 race series with one discard (a 15-race series for the 49er).
- The top 10 boats proceed through to a final Medal Race, taking through their series score.
- The Medal Race is a double-counter, and will be added to the series score.
- If the Medal Race is not completed, medals are awarded based on the series score (as usual).
- On-the-water umpiring will be used in the Medal Race.
Mark Reynolds, two-time Olympic Champion in the Star class, is no fan of the new system. Writing for the online newsletter Scuttlebutt, the American commented: "I've won the Olympics twice under very different circumstances. In 1992 I won by a large margin where I didn't have to sail the last race, and then in 2000 I had to come from behind to win. I even lost the Gold in the 1988 Olympics when there was an ‘Olympic' scoring system that rewarded inconsistency. That scoring system also made it harder for everyone to figure out what was going on like this last race weighting will do. If we had this new system in 1992 and we had finished last in the final Medal Race, Hal and I still would have won the Gold. Now how would Gary Jobson explain that one to those thousands watching it on TV?"
So TV's nightmare scenario could still occur under this new system, but to be fair to ISAF, it's far less likely that we'll see the Olympic Champion crowned with a race to spare. A runaway winner is always hard to peg back in sailing, unless you resort to some of the ridiculous ‘winner-takes-all' scoring systems which have been trialled at Grade 1 Olympic regattas over the past year, and of which we've hopefully seen the last.
Of more concern is a point made by Ian Walker, who coincidentally was the Silver medal winner behind Mark Reynolds in Sydney 2000. Writing for the website The Daily Sail, Walker comments: "The last race of the Olympics is a special case. In my experience those people who have no chance of getting in the medals (it could be half the 10 boat fleet) do not try their hardest or are so hungover that they cannot! Worse than that it could be that they influence the overall results more in this system. In recent years we have even seen boats giving up their race position to let their friends or training partners win a medal. This is in practice very hard to prove and could be made worse by double points and everyone having time to think about the permutations."
We've seen this affect a number of British sailors at the last couple of Olympiads. Who can forget the look of sheer dejection in Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield, after seeing a Bronze slip from their grasp on the final short reach to the finish in Sydney? The Argentinean 470 crew needed to get past just one more team and they sailed past one of their training partners at double speed to clinch a place on the podium, relegating the Brits to the leather medal. The same went for Nick Dempsey in the windsurfing at Athens, when he was in the Silver medal position but slipped to Bronze because the competitors behind him stopped working as hard down the final leg. Actually, you can hardly blame them, it looks like far too much hard work if there's not even the prospect of a medal at the end of all that pump and grind. But it did mean the colour of medals was determined by other sailors' lack of interest in the outcome. It would be even worse if, as Ian Walker suggests, other sailors sought to influence the outcome.
Then again, the new system has found favour with none other than Russell Coutts, the Finn Olympic Champion in 1984. "How many races do we need to decide the Olympic champion? 10,000, 1000, 100, 10, three, or one? In the past, I've seen sailors completely dominate classes for the three years prior to the games and then not win a medal. The same thing happens in other sports. Yet most other sports have a format where there is an Olympic final and sailing was under pressure to create something similar. The new format is a move towards an ‘Olympic final' but it does not go all the way. I support the move. Future champions will still earn their medals by sailing better. I just wish we could find a way to make campaigning for the Olympics more affordable for our younger sailors!"
If you can draw a broad range of conclusions from the experts, such as Reynolds, Walker and Coutts, then ISAF can take credit for having found a reasonable solution to an impossible problem. Two other areas which ISAF could work much harder on, however, is in the selection of the Olympic Regatta venue and the boats that are selected for the competition. Coutts makes a plea to reduce the costs of campaigning for the Games. Well, a great start would be to tell classes like the Star, the Yngling and the Tornado to get their houses in order. These are hugely expensive boats that even British sailors can barely afford to campaign properly - even the ones that have won Gold medals!
I know that when Iain Percy first got into the Star he was worried about funding issues, and about being to afford the huge numbers of sails that top-level campaigning requires. Apparently, a fast mainsail has a hot-cut leech rather than one with a conventional seam, so the leeches give way very quickly. Such is the speed difference between old and new sails that it is not even worth two-boat tuning the Star unless you have new kit. How easily could that one problem be solved by bringing in composite sails?
But far better, in my view, would be to bring in a strict one-design like a RS K-6 or Laser SB3. People often point out that development is an intrinsic part of sailing and is equally valid a part of Olympic competition as raw sailing skill. What a convenient argument for the better-funded countries, is what I say. It's not that I'm against development - after all, I am an International 14 sailor! But I know how expensive development can be and it has no place in the Olympics, which should be about promoting sailing into new territories around the world.
Far more important than tinkering with the scoring format would be to have a massive cull of the Olympic classes and start again. ISAF should name their ideal criteria for a singlehander, doublehander, cat or keelboat, and it would be up to the incumbent classes to reapply for the job, along with any other classes that wanted to apply. The argument against this is that the poorer countries have already made a massive investment in the existing Olympic classes, and that to vote in a new set of boats would make their existing fleets obsolete. I suspect that, with the exception of the Laser, the 470 and possibly the Finn, this notion of there being row upon row of Olympic class boats in emerging nations in Africa, Asia or South America to be a convenient myth for those that prefer to retain the status quo.
There's little point in complaining for 2008, because for Qingdao we are certainly stuck with the classes that we have. It's not too late for Weymouth 2012 though. And on that subject, I spoke to Dick Batt, southcoast sailmaker and also chairman of ISAF's Equipment Committee. Just returned from the ISAF conference in Singapore, Dick said that they are evaluating the prospect of introducing a doublehanded skiff for the women, exactly what Julian Bethwaite's 29er XX is designed to be, although no doubt others will throw their hat in the ring if ISAF run an evaluation trial. And Dick adds that they are also evaluating the keelboat classes, weighing up their appropriateness, and also reconsidering the relative merits of fleet and match racing. So amen to that. At least raising these issues is a start towards some much-needed reform before 2012.
Of far greater immediate concern, however, is the widely predicted non-event that Qingdao promises to be. The statistical weather data taken from the Olympic time of year does not make encouraging reading. If you want to look at it, follow this link - http://www.sailing.org/olympics2008/weather.asp. This was Ian Walker's take on it in The Daily Sail. "When you study the weather data from Qingdao, it is pretty clear that the main issue is not going to be the format but how much racing there will actually be and whether that racing is worth watching on TV. Racing is statistically only likely on less than half the available days during the Olympic period so if I was ISAF I would be working on making the schedule as flexible as possible rather than concentrating too much of making a spectacle of the last day."
I do hope that all the ‘doubting Thomases' over Qingdao - and I include myself among them - are proven well and truly wrong, and that it's blue skies and a Force 5 every day for the Olympic Regatta. But statistically it doesn't look good, and that should never be allowed to happen again. Even if the weather does come good, no one will be able to say, ‘We told you so.' At least with Weymouth we stand an even chance of getting some wind.
