Olympic Events: How to proceed

The direction of Olympic Sailing, and how that impacts the entire sport, will be a major decision to be made at World Sailing’s Mid-Year Meeting to be held May 10-15 at Chelsea Football Club in London, Great Britain.

The sport of Sailing at the Olympics has 10 events, and it is this program that is under review. There have been many reasons for change, but primary to the mission is to achieve gender equality and heighten the uniqueness of each event.

The issue being addressing at the mid-year meeting is focused only on the selection of the events (ie, Men’s One Person Dinghy) for the Paris 2024 Olympic program. Once those are decided, decisions related to what equipment (ie, Laser) will be made at the 2018 World Sailing Annual Conference in November.

After the November 2017 Annual Conference, a combined Events and Equipment Committee Working Party was formed to consider and make recommendations to the Events Committee on the Sailing events for Paris 2024. Within their findings, now published, they admit this to be a herculean task to select a program of 10 events that will please all nations.

“Compared to many other sports, Sailing is diverse and complex. Being equipment based with a field of play in an outdoor, uncontrolled environment, adds notable cost and logistic issues. There is also significant disparity between nations in the level of participation possible in Olympic Sailing. These factors make any change difficult. No event slate or submission will solve these issues.”

What we do know is how change is imminent for Paris 2024. Here is the Olympic program for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020:

MEN
Two Person Dinghy – 470
One Person Dinghy – Laser
Skiff – 49er
Windsurfer – RS:X
Heavyweight Men’s One Person Dinghy – Finn

WOMEN
Two Person Dinghy – 470
One Person Dinghy – Laser Radial
Skiff – 49erFX
Windsurfer – RS:X

MIXED
Multihull – Nacra 17

To read the report from the 2024 Events & Equipment Working Party… click here

This story is from Scuttlebutt Sailing News.

Comments are closed.