In days past, sailing was always an expensive and elitist pastime enjoyed by the people with lots of money. Over time people were able to have a bit of disposable income that was previously denied to them and they too were able to go sailing albeit on a much smaller scale. It now seems that after reading that article above that we have again come full circle and sailing will once again be denied to the less affluent among us. When a World Championship Moth is (as alluded to in the article) in the region of $50k US then it has once again become elitist.

LooseChange said..
In days past, sailing was always an expensive and elitist pastime enjoyed by the people with lots of money. Over time people were able to have a bit of disposable income that was previously denied to them and they too were able to go sailing albeit on a much smaller scale. It now seems that after reading that article above that we have again come full circle and sailing will once again be denied to the less affluent among us. When a World Championship Moth is (as alluded to in the article) in the region of $50k US then it has once again become elitist.

That's actually a good article. The Finn has been dropped from the olympics but it was always an expensive class. Good Finn was 50 grand but you needed two of them to get selected into the Australian team. One in Australia and one in Europe. Not enough time to ship one boat about to all the compulsory regattas to qualify.
That's also an interesting point about the mixed crews excluding Muslim sailors in long races.

Just because WS or IOC will supply your boats does not make this a cheap event. This makes it equal (sort of). So you may well be able to just rock up and sail the Australian/Oceania qualification series but without significant training in a similar boat you have zero chance of getting close. That is because there are already Australian teams talking about the time they will need to train. That is train full time.

The big costs in any Olympic campaign is not the boat. That is the big cost for the trickle down to the club sailor sailing a 9er or Finn. The real cost for these people is the day to day living expenses including accommodation and travel for the events. You cannot do this and work at the same time. So 2 x 50k Finns maybe about half your annual costs if your lucky.

I can see an argument that this event is likely to be cheaper (maybe) once you own a 30 ft performance offshore boat. Most training will be Australian based but with no competition it will be hard to effectively train. I dont know whether someone would be able to get onto the Figaro circuit to train as Australia will be lacking serious training time given we are struggling to accept that 2 handed sailing is a thing. These sailors who will eventually compete will be against the French who have been racing Mini's and Figaros all their lives. I am willing to put down $100 right now that the French will win the gold medal in this event... by a long way.

My bet will be that the offshore boat will have foils. Like the Figaro 3 but different enough to think that the current Figaro sailors are not as advantaged