Chris 249 said..








Isn't it going to be like Raceboards etc, where the manufacturers have to have made (or agree to make) a certain minimum number of sets of production equipment, and then get to register it so that people can use it in races?

The sad thing is that a sport that claims to pride itself on innovation will not allow backyard inventors to race. Ironically, the very first Windsurfer, Mike Waltze's incredibly influential first sinker, the first shortboards etc would all be banned under the current rules.

Chris 249 said..









What resources are given to the dinghy clubs that produce such huge numbers of sailors? My old club in Sydney was one of the biggest dinghy clubs around and we never saw any "resources" from AS; in fact I have never been at a single club that had any "resources". They all bred their own talent or attracted it from other clubs on the basis of the club's strength.

The dinghies have good pathways and fleets largely because dinghy sailors have been working their butts off as volunteers for decades to build junior sailing, and also because they have a cheap, simple OD class that both adults and juniors can sail. The dinghy clubs built their grass roots fleets and we haven't; that's not AS's fault.

The Lasers may have AS coaches, but at least when I was seriously in them the AS coaches were NOT allowed to coach male Radial sailors - and yet there were plenty of them. The Laser Radial gets big fleets every year so they deserve coaching. When even the Laser 4.7s, which aren't eligible for the Youth Worlds, can get twelve times as many entrants as the windsurfers to the Youth Nats it's not surprising that they get rewarded with good pathways and coaching.

I'm not at all sure that the Techno is actually the second biggest class - it seems to be far smaller than the Opti, Laser and Radial and probably smaller than the 420 and maybe 29er. That is not to knock the Techno, because the problem may be the lack of support from windsurfers. Okay, RQ does a good job and so do some other pockets - but that does not mean that the rest of the windsurfing world in Australia does a good job.

Even the fact that RQ started as a dinghy club, became a yacht club and is now adopting windsurfing is an example of the issue. When have windsurfers ever formed a physical club in Australia? Lots of dinghy clubs have built their own premises and run their own weekly races - why should they be expected to support a different discipline? If we want our discipline to grow, shouldn't we grow it like they grew theirs? Sure, it's harder to get a clubhouse these days, but we still don't tend to put in the same amount of work to develop our own fleets clubs, and therefore arguably we shouldn't expect the same support.

I'm not aware of whether we qualified to go to Rio in all respects, but years ago we didn't even send the 470s at one stage - now we have won a bunch of gold in that class. The 470 experience proves that a class can recover even if it isn't sent to the Games, if it gets enough support from other people in the same discipline.

Sterlings said..
Jo Sterling qualified Australia for a spot at the RIO Olympics at the RSX Worlds in Oman in 2015. There were no men campaigning. SA decided not to send Jo in May 2016 as well as the 49erFX. At the time Jo was ranked 11th in the world. She had achieved many top 15/top 20 results in large fleets in Europe. Instead Turkey got the spot and they were ranked about 60th in world. SA's reason to us was that they wanted 'multiple top 10 finishes' although the qualification document did not quantify this and they could send an athlete discretionarily. Automatic selection to go is a top 5 world finish or thereabouts. What was irksome was that a couple of other athletes were sent discretionarily with more or less similar results.
There was some politics around the 49er fx non-selection and one rumour was that Jo was a casualty of this process. The 49er fx's appealed and lost. We didn't appeal for a few reasons.

Jo went back to study - Masters of Sports Psychology now (has real life experience for sure). SA talked with her about campaigning again . But as you can perhaps understand - another 4 years without any income ( an lots of outcome from the bank of mum and dad) for perhaps another dubious decision was not that attractive to her.
They then did not continue with a windsurfing coach.

btw we first funded Max personally (together with a USA sailor) to come to Australia in around 2013. Jo got some good results in Europe (14th in the Europeans if I recall) and SA then funded him on a regatta to regatta basis until the put him on a contact. We funded Max ourselves for awhile, as the Jo was getting very little coaching from AS - a couple of camps a year as part of the youth team or from a boat sailor who didn't really know the RSX.

cammd said..






We did qualify the country for Rio, if you want to argue whether we met AS standards or Olympic standards that is another issue but the country was qualified to send a Rep.

Techno is 10000 strong with active sailors with worlds recieving 300-400 entries so again arguing details is really missing the point, popularity with the class is not the issue, its very popular with youth worldwide, the fact that its not in Australia indicates something else is at play.

As windsurfers we are not asking for or expecting the same support as all the other classes however as members of Australian Sailing, we "arguably" have a right to ask for and we deserve to recieve some support to develop and grow our classes and support our Olympic hopeful's

We had a AS funded national coach and a bunch of volunteers in numerous clubs working to build numbers in the youth, those numbers were building and the techno class was looking very promising in terms of participation and quality of the sailors . We still have those volunteers and they will continue to put in the effort but AS cut the funding to the one coach we had.

I wonder if AS was to cut all support to a class like 420/470 how would it go, do you think it would thrive or do you think it might suffer a bit despite all the volunteers and club support.

Anyway the point is youth windsurfing was on a upward trajectory and AS should have kept the support going at least for one Olympic cycle before throwing in the towel.

windsufering said..
The fx 49er Olympic spot was chosen 4 years out hence the treatment of certain sailors