Olympics Multihulls

[Taffy]

It is a Disgrace that the multihulls will be omitted from London. I firmly believe that a multihull should be included but perhaps its time for a review of the class is sailed. The way some multihull classes are getting so sophisticated we might as well be sailing Mono Hulls.Catamaran classes wanting to sail Windward/return and no reaches, Come on! even the Little America Cup Cats did not do that.Lets get behind a class that takes us back to basics Even though I have never owned or raced a Hobie 16,and have always argued against them. Lets be honest it's the biggest selling class of all times, still relativly affordable allowing all the poorer nations to participate.No spinnakers no centerboards, only the best sailors win. I am sure Hobie(as they used to do for their worlds)would surply an identical set of boats for the Olympics.Lets wake up and realise that the boom in Catamaran in the 70s and 80s were due to the fact that cats were fast and cheap. Lets get back to those days and stop trying to have cats sailing like Monos.

[shwell]

There's a DVD with Mitch Booth commenting how Olympic officials where amazed upon discovering athletic prowess isn't needed to sail a Tornado. MB says good gear is the most important thing. It maybe a reason why the multihull has been dropped. Personally, I reckon a demanding single hander should be the Olympic multihull. I also reckon it'll be back sooner than later.

[colin]

The Olympic system of selection ensures only the best of the wealthy [or heavily sponsored]will be able to mount a campaign.A cheaper boat may help but not solve the problem while the existing criterior exists.My understanding is the omission of the Tornado is more due to superior lobbying power of opposing interests such as 470 & Star than cost issues.

[lachy pudney]

You have too remember as well that the cost of the boat is only a small part of the overall cost of a full Olympic campaign where you travel the world over to even make the team.

[Taffy]

If MB statement was one of the reasons for dropping multihulls. Then surely sailing should be dropped altogether, as the same criteria applies to all classes. As I stated all crews should be given Identical boats, Hobie used to do it and I can recollect that Lasers did the same.I agree that the cost of boats is only a minor part of the overall campaign. But surely the choice of a cheaper class for the Olympics would assist more & more cat sailors to try for selection. Regardless of this lets all get together and get the multihulls(which ever class)back in the Games.

[colin]

Olympic sailing should be relevent to 21st century,demanding to sail and exciting to watch.Only Tornado & 49er of the current lot meet this.It is not an event for vintage boats.Tornado has remained relevant through well timed updates.If we need a change maybe F18

[xmatelot]

Hi all,

I hear that "Yachting Australia" is advertising for a full time "Training Manager".

It appears, (in the advert), that sailing experience is not a requirement.

pete

[BBCC]

I think Taffy's on the mark in some ways. Everyone talks about the fact that the IOC wants sailing to get more TV, but the official post-Athens event report also said (and with the same amount of emphasis) that the IOC wants sailing to have wider international spread.

The facts are pretty clear - the widest international spread comes with the cheaper classes. Faster boats have less international spread. These clear facts are balanced by the allegations that fast boats get more TV time.

It's not such an easy choice - does ISAF piss off the IOC by having faster boats and fewer countries, or perhaps lose some more of its tiny amount of TV by having cheaper boats from more countries?

Sure, some people say that sailing is heading towards faster boats - but when you actually crunch some numbers and look at where the growth an interest is worldwide, you really have to doubt that.

After all, it's not as if many "fast boat" fleets (cats, skiffs or boards) are regularly getting record numbers to their nationals like the Lasers are, and worldwide the old H16 is clearly the most popular boat. A couple of us have been doing the research by going back through old mags etc, and honestly bullshit apart it's almost impossible to find a swing towards faster boats - and when it did happen in the past numbers dropped, apparently because Joe Average found the faster boats too difficult, complicated and expensive.

You can actually find plenty of reasons why slower, simpler, cheaper boats are actually MORE relevant to sailing in the 21st century than fast boats.....pity in a way as the Tornado is still my favourite cat of all time by a looooooooooooooong way and I'd hate to see it out!

BTW Colin, are you sure the Laser, 470 etc are easy to sail well?

[This message has been edited by BBCC (edited 16 January 2008).]

[This message has been edited by BBCC (edited 16 January 2008).]

[TornadoSport260]

Hey BBC would you actually want to sail a H16 in the Olympics. Its one of the most out dated boats still racing. The sails are like laser sails and only good for 1 season... need i mention that they have a HUGE sail area that is so inefficient that its a joke. Yep they are the biggest cat class worldwide but to we really want another out dated boat in the olympics?

[TornadoSport260]

Xmate the reason sailing experience is not required is that the manager will manage the overall training scheme not actually do it. They draw their technical sailing information from technical committees and the likes.

[Yeti2300]

For what it's worth, I agree with Michael. The H16 is a dog to sail and not what we (the cat sailors) want to see in the games. The Torando is still clearly the best cat going around and we need to keep this in the games. I would think that worldwide there would be at least ten percent of sailors on catamarns so on this basis along cats warrant inclusion in the games. It's about time some of the older monos are looked at. I reckon the cost of some of these would be comparable to the tornado.

[BBCC]

I said I only partly agreed with Taffy's vote for the H16, and I NEVER said there should be no cat!

The Tornado is my favourite cat by a long way, it's one of the best buzzes sailing can offer - but there's more to choosing an Olympic class than what some people want to sail...

I was just trying to point out that it's not the easy question so many people pretend it is. It's not enough to just look at boats that look good for TV if not many countries sail them.

In quite a few countries, there's no official support for non-Olympic classes but the Tornado is too expensive for lots of those countries - so those countries just dump the whole idea of training kids in cats. And some anti-cat people use the expense of the big T as an excuse to try to get rid of all cats.

I have to admit, I don't like the H16 either, and I'd hope that the Tornado can be saved by saying it is one of the classes that's good for TV. But like Taffy says, shouldn't we at least open our minds to other ideas? How do we know we're right in choosing the T unless we ask the question?

And we can't just chuck out one of the "old fashioned monos". We lose either the Finn (about the only centreboarder for big fellas, who probably make up as big a proportion of sailors as cat sailors do) or the 470 or Laser (or RSX) which are the most popular and widespread of the Olympic classes - and THAT pisses off the smaller countries that sail and AND pisses off the IOC which wants sailing to be more widespread. Or we lose the keelboats, and they represent the most popular type of sailing (RTI and Barcalona get 1800 yachts, with up to 30 crew each and over 10,000 in total - that makes Texel look tiny) and THAT pisses off most of the sailors.

There's just no easy answer. I'd have thought ISAF could do a compromise - get the cat medal back by cutting fleet sizes or telling sailors that they'll have to accept inferior shore facilities, or dumping coaches or officials or something - but maybe that's impossible.