Shane said...
I think that the argument for validation for any class being a part of the olympics based on the proportions of its participants is a little flawed. Sailing as a whole is showcased and it makes sense to me to have each its various disciplines represented. Dinghy sailing, keel boat sailing, multihulls, kiting, and windsurfing are all very distinct from each other in terms of the athletics and skills involved, and I would have thought that the basic idea of the games would be to have a competition for each. Wouldn't it be great if some things in the world actually worked based on a rational ideology without profit and greed being the deciding factor all the time!?
I brought up numbers, but simply to give a sense of perspective on the power we who sail boards have, and to point out that we are not the ones who are the major force and numbers in the sport.
But I stand by the numbers as something that should be considered in a rational, logical and respectful decision about what events should be in the Games. Surely it is not "flawed" to say when you are sharing a limited resource (i.e. number of Olympic medal events available for a sport) then a major consideration should be equality of opportunity for the participants?
When there's 10 or 20 times as many sailors who do one discipline then surely fairness demands that discipline gets more medals? At the moment it is bizarre to see how many more kids are vying for spots on the Laser "pathway" compared to the windsurfer "pathway" - why make it even less fair? What makes the interest of a few hundred competitive boarders as important as the interest of many thousands of competitive boat sailers?
Talking about "various disciplines" ignores the fact that there is no definition of what a "discipline" is. Just Google "sailing" and "discipline" and you see the problem. Sometimes there are references to just 3 disciplines in the whole sport (match racing, fleet racing and ocean racing IIRC) and sometimes there are references to many more - I think that I have counted 21 so-called "disciplines" in sailing referred to on the net!
Even inside pro windsurfing, the PWA says that "there are 5 main disciplines that are held on the PWATour: Wave, Freestyle, Racing, Super X and Indoor." And in the rest of windsurfing you could add in RSX/Raceboard/Techno style "all-wind course racing" and speed as well. So that's 7 disciplines just for windsurfing.
In conventional yachts, there's an entire other bunch of areas you can call "disciplines". Same in dinghies and cats. And of course there's offshore singlehanded racing, offshore doublehanded racing, radio controlled sailing, match racing, teams racing, speed sailing, yada yada yada.
So since there is no definition of what a discipline is, and we don't have enough medals to fit in every event that many people call a discipline, we can't just say "have one set of medals for each discipline."
Since we have to choose which out of 20 or more disciplines can get the 7 or so sets of medals, shouldn't we use popularity as one criteria? Or are sailors in one discipline more equal than others when it comes to being represented at the Games?
