QLD
1855 posts
http://www.waterhound.com/ika-to-isaf-olympic-committe-heres-how-you-do-it.html
some pretty good points in there.
Discussion?
NSW
1354 posts
I agree that it is a Very valid argument and would love to see both Kiting and Sailboarding in the Olympics. It would also be interesting to see freestyle elements of both sports included as well as coarse racing.
I wonder what the Sailboarding community feel about this
NSW
3585 posts
Dumping the Finn, especially to get the cat back in, is a great idea. That line "you have to allow people of different weights to have a chance" that the Finn class puts up is completely self-serving, because for decades the Olympic classes were heavily biased towards heavy sailors and they rejected any complaints from the light sailors. Having spent years ignoring the concept of fairness towards light sailors, they cannot complain if light sailors reject the concept of being fair to them.
But one issue is that the official IOC stats from the Beijing Games prove clearly that "cool" and "spectacular" sports do NOT attract more viewers.
Athletics was broadcast for 206 hours, got 65 mill spectators each minute
Swimming was broadcast for 120 hours, got 58.8 mill spectators each minute.
Diving 31 / 43.5
Table tennis 41 / 40.8
Rowing 24 / 40.8
Volleyball 103 / 38.5
Track cycling 37/32.8
Sprint (flat water) kayak/canoe – 24 / 32.4
Rhythmic gymnastics 49/ 30.4
Sync Swimming 17 / 25.7
Sailing – 11 / 24.5
Road cycling 121 / 23.8
Slalom (whitewater) canoe – 22 / 22.3
Beach volleyball 59 / 23.6
BMX 44 / 23.2
Triathlon 68 /. 19.4
Water polo 24 / 17.4
MTB 45 / 16.4
The indisputable fact is that spectacular sports do NOT attract more viewers. The most popular sport of all is athletics, followed by a bunch of people swimming up and down a pool at about 4 knots. Diving - which seems more spectacular than swimming up and down a pool - attracts only 2/3 the viewers. Water polo, which is a pretty fast and vicious sport, is much less popular than people going up and down a pool, or synchronised swimming.
In cycling, fast and furious (but hard to understand) track cycling is popular, followed by "old fashioned" road cycling and then the "newer and cooler" mountainbiking, with the even "newer and cooler" BMX trailing a looooong way back.
The fourth event with cycling in it, triathlon, was only as popular as badminton.
"Boring old vanilla" volleyball attracts half as many again spectators as "cool new funky beach volleyball", which doesn't seem to be living up to the hype.
In canoe/kayak, the "boring" flat water stuff is much more popular than the spectacular whitewater stuff.
Rowing - which is a bunch of people going in a straight line over glassy water at about 8 (?) knots, got not too far from double the viewers of the windy sailing regatta which came complete with crashing 49ers, RSX boards, and Tornadoes - all of which can go three times as fast as a rowing shell and over rough water. But not many people cared.
So any argument that kiting is more media friendly because it's more spectacular suffers from a big credibility issue, because being spectacular doesn't make you media-friendly.
Secondly, there are good reasons to have two two-person dinghies and a keelboat or two. The plain and simple fact is that these are the sectors of comparative sailing that attract the most competitors by a big margin, if we look at class membership and national title attendance. Yacht sailing vastly outnumber any other form of competitive sailing, with several events getting over 10,000 participants. Compare that to the 1200 or so you get in the biggest cat race or the 300+ you get in what is claimed to be the biggest windsurfer/kite event.
If we want to even consider the issue of fairness, surely there has to be some consideration for the fact that two-person dinghy and keelboat sailors vastly outnumber all other types of competitive sailor - surely fairness demands some recognition of that?
The 470 isn't "more than 50 years old" as a design, and if the submission can't get that straight there may be other problems with it. And the 420, which is almost as old, is doing quite well with kids as is the ancient Opti. The idea that kids are only attracted towards new boats is simply wrong, as demonstrated by the vast Opti and 420 fleets around the world.
The idea that match racing is the ultimate event for keelboats is rather amusing.
None of this means kiting shouldn't be in the Games, but there's a fair few flaws in the arguments.
NSW
3585 posts
Another point - the IKSA submission completely contradicts itself.
It says that the "the Olympic Games must be the pinnacle event for this category of events and classes.
Keelboats have a well established and recognized Match Racing World Tour which is
considered to be the pinnacle of the sport, and the womens keel boat racing seems
to go in the same direction.
What realistically could be then the reason for keelboat events in the Olympic
Games, except saving the Star ?"
So IKSA says that the Match Racing World Tour is the pinnacle event of keelboat sailing, and therefore the keelboats should be out of the Games.(1)
But the IKSA also says (2) that the America's Cup is now the pinnacle event of multihull sailing - yet the IKSA says that "the whole sailing world believes
that it has been a mistake" to dump the multihull.(3)
You can't have it both ways, IKSA. If keelboats should be out because the match racing tour is their pinnacle event, then multihulls should be out because the America's Cup is now their pinnacle event.
If they cannot even create a submission with a logical argument, how can they claim to know how to run the sport?
(1) - complete BS in the opinion of 99% of keelboat sailors, I'd say, but IKSA says it's true without giving the slightest bit of evidence.
(2) see the pdf version of IKSA's submission.
(3) dumping the cat was a bad decision IMHO, I'm not defending it - although there was some logic from some angles.
