Okay, I am going to repeat my initial questions, because I haven't really seen any good answers:

Why should we care whether or not there is a multihull in the Olympics?

We have had the Tornado in there since 1976, and what has it done for multihull sailing as a whole? Do more people sail multihulls because there is a multihull in the Olympics?

If the multihull were eliminated from the Olympics, what would change, if anything?

And I don't think technological "improvements" are really relevant to increasing overall interest in the sport, as far as the non-sailing public is concerned.

I guess a bigger question would be, how has SAILING in general benefited from being an Olympic sport? (Aside from getting sailing some occasional promo in the media.)