Attending an ISAF Annual Conference is at once an enlightening and frustrating experience, as I reminded myself on a recent trip to Helsinki. Hundreds of people come together from all corners of the world, the vast majority of them giving their time and expertise for free, each one of them having something to contribute to our sport. For that, everyone involved should be applauded and we should be thankful that so many are prepared to do it for the love of sailing.

The problem is that are too many people pitching in with ideas and more importantly, too many who aren't just there for the love, but who have commercial or other vested interests in seeing certain outcomes produced from the Conference. While one set of discussions might be conducted openly in committee rooms, another set of discussions takes place privately in nearby hotel lobbies or bars where a certain amount of horsetrading goes on. "You help me vote the xxx class in as a new Olympic class, and I'll vote for the yyy class as next year's doublehander in the ISAF Youth Worlds," might be a typical example. At least a broad body of organisations and interests gets representation at the Conference, but it is to the point of overdemocratisation.

Imagine 30 people all standing around an elephant, each holding a rope tied round the elephant's middle. If everyone could agree to pull the elephant in a certain direction, then perhaps 30 people might just be able to move the elephant. But if everyone tries to pull the elephant in a different direction, then the elephant goes nowhere. It is ISAF President Göran Petersson's task to try to get everyone pulling ISAF in the same direction, a thankless job at the best of times, although there were some encouraging steps forwards in a few areas this year.

Six Olympic class regattas will be combined under the umbrella of a new series called the World Cup, where sailors will take their best four finishing scores from Sail Melbourne, Rolex Miami ORC, Semaine Olympique Française, Holland Regatta and Kiel Week. Sailors cannot count more than three events from any continent, which means that to get a fourth qualifying regatta they will have to go to either Melbourne or Miami.

This is a great step forward in putting together a cohesive series that will mean something to the media (which, like it or not, is what counts these days in an era where commercial viability is the main factor in determining whether a sport retains its Olympic status). However, it is still a watered down version of an even more ambitious proposal that was tabled in Helsinki, which would have seen this six-regatta series merely as the qualifier for an end-of-season World Cup finale. The best four of six regattas would decide which 25 teams would go through to the World Cup finals, a four-day event consisting of three days' all-races-to-count fleet racing, and one final Medal Race day. The top 25 would be whittled down to the last 10 for the Medal Race, where every team would go into that final race with a clean slate. This would mean that every one of those final 10 teams had an equal chance at winning the World Cup.

To all of us brought up on the concept of a week-long race series with one or two discards thrown in, this concept might seem a little on the extreme side. A class act such as Ben Ainslie would see his chances of winning the World Cup vastly reduced in a winner-takes-all final Medal Race lasting just 30 minutes, a thrilling but unfair climax after six international regattas each lasting a week. But these are the sort of pressures that ISAF is under from the International Olympic Committee if sailing is to continue to be included in the Games.

Sailing is being told by the IOC that it is the most expensive sport to organise and to televise, and that the commercial return is negligible. Either sailing becomes more gladiatorial, appealing to the instant gratification demands of a television audience, or it packs its bags and goes home. Many of us who love sailing but couldn't care less about the Olympics might ask why ISAF should go to the bother. Why not just take our sport elsewhere? Well the grim reality for ISAF is that the lion's share of its funding comes from the Olympics, whether it be taking its percentage of the multi-million dollar TV rights or other associated benefits, so it would hard for ISAF to sustain itself without the Games. ISAF provides the overview, the infrastructure and many other things that we take for granted in our sport, not to mention other such niceties as the Racing Rules. So even we weekend pond sailors need ISAF, and ISAF needs the Olympics.

With that in mind, you would think that the imminent threat of Olympic ejection would concentrate the minds of people at the ISAF Conference to all start pulling in the same direction before the grand piano lands on the elephant's head (sorry, enough of that analogy, you've got the picture now, I'm sure). Certainly there is a heightened sense of awareness of the issues at hand, but how much actual work is going on to really change things? Not nearly enough.

The World Cup concept is a good step in the right direction. So is the Medal Race, which has been operating reasonably successfully for the past year on the Olympic circuit. But the fundamental problem is the choice of venue for 2008 and the choice of classes for Qingdao. With less than two years to go, there's not much we can do about this now, but there's plenty that could be done in time for Weymouth 2012.

The IOC has already decreed that the number of athletes for 2012 must reduce to 380 and the number of medals must be cut from 11 to 10. So this will create an interesting bun fight as to which class will get the chop at the ISAF Annual Conference in Palma, November 2008. Refer back to my earlier explanation of backroom politicking for an understanding about how this decision will be reached. It will all be about the deals that are struck in the bars and hotel lobbies that will determine which class is sacrificed, so even some of the more obvious Olympic classes such as (if I may be so bold to suggest) the Laser and the 49er are vulnerable in these unpredictable circumstances.

Add to this the desire to put in an Olympic skiff for the women (eg. A 29erXX or RS800), and you've got to get rid of two classes. Ouch! Imagine the conniving and backstabbing that will have to go on for that to happen. You could get rid of the two keelboats, the Star and the Yngling, as these are two of the most expensive and least accessible classes in the Games. Or you could wave goodbye to the Men's and Women's 470. Then again does the Olympics really need the Finn when it's got the Laser? The arguments for and against each of the classes are complex and unfathomable.

What I would love to see is for ISAF to take the opportunity to reappraise the whole Olympic Regatta format from scratch. At the moment we send 11 different classes all round the same short-course style of race course. Does that actually make sense? It seems like it's so entrenched a concept that we've forgotten to ask the question. At the moment we try to have a broad selection of classes that represent different styles of sailing boat - ie singlehanded, doublehanded, skiff, cat, keelboat, sailboard etc. Why not shift the focus from the classes to the style of racing? So, you have the skiffs doing some crash-and-burn close-to-shore windward/leewards in Portland Harbour; the hike-out dinghies engage in some long course racing out in Weymouth Bay; the keelboats do some match racing off Weymouth seafront; the catamarans go off on a 24-hour endurance race from Weymouth, around the Isle of Wight (clockwise or anticlockwise - it's up to the sailors to decide) and back to Weymouth; and the hydrofoilers doing straight-line speed runs, whoever clocks the fastest time on the GPS wins Gold.

Once you have decided the categories of racing, then you could decide which are the most appropriate classes to fill those niches. Somehow ISAF has to break the stranglehold of the existing Olympic classes. The Star, Finn, 470 and Tornado have been around so long that it's almost taken for granted that they'll be back in the Games the next time. Time for every class to be made redundant and for them to be invited to reapply for their old jobs. If they get voted back in, great; if not, it's here's your gold watch and thanks for the past 50 years, but it's time to move on now.

One class that has moved closer to being considered a possible Olympic candidate is the Musto Skiff, which was approved for ISAF Recognised status. This means that the class will now be able to call next year's Gold Cup a bona fide World Championship. Congratulations also to the RS Feva which successfully applied to upgrade its status from ISAF Recognised to a fully-fledged International class.

A bit like the Olympic classes, though, there is a similar problem in International classes where once you're in the club it seems you're in for life. The end result is more world championships than you can shake a stick at. I can't recall the exact number, but I think there are somewhere in the region of 140 world championships in sailing. If anyone was to ask me, I'd say that number was a little higher than it should be.

Beyond the Olympic classes and some of the well-established youth classes it's hard to think of many dinghy classes that produce regattas of the quality and breadth of nationalities which deserve the title of World Championship. In the youth category there are some very deserving candidates such as the Optimist, 420, Cadet and a few more besides. How many in the senior classes, though? The 505 and the OK certainly deserve full world championship status, as do some of the former Olympic classes like the Flying Dutchman, Soling and Europe.

After that are a number of classes that operate at the margins of world championship status, such as the International 14, Fireball and Enterprise, and quite a few such as the GP14 that would really struggle to justify their status if they were asked to reapply. Broadly speaking, the criteria for International status are 20 boats actively sailing in at least six nations in at least three continents. The three continents criterion is one that many International classes would struggle to fulfil.

Occasionally some classes are put on notice that their International status is in jeopardy. The Tempest, the former Olympic trapeze keelboat, is just such a class that was put on notice this year, but it is likely that more classes are to be put under the microscope following the formation of a new ISAF working party that is set to look at this whole thorny issue. One possibility being mooted is that International status will no longer mean a class is automatically entitled to call its major international regatta a World Championship. It might be a privilege that existing International classes will have to apply for. This might seem hard line and draconian, and some classes might be tempted to tell ISAF where to stick its International status. I hope not. We can't all be kings of the castle. Every tinpot world championship that exists in the sailing calendar devalues the worth of events that really deserve to be called world championships.