Mary --

Just because you have never experienced the Olympics as a driving factor in your sailing does not mean that the rest of the sailing world shares your opinion. Where I'm pretty sure that I'm the minority in this discussion, I know for a fact that there is an overwhelming number of sailors, youth or not, who consider the potential of Olympic competition incredibly inspiring.

I have to agree with John. And besides politics and money, there is no good reason (definitely none good enough for the sailors who are getting caught up in this mess) for the US governing body to withdraw support. We DID medal at the last Olympics.

But maybe the problem is right under our noses. In reading these threads I've noticed a heavy critique of US Sailing, the Olympics, etc. etc. I understand that most of us on catsailor have very little interest in "non-amateur" sailing. But why criticize something that requires little more than appreciation? Do you really think that nothing "trickles down"? That there is NO benefit to Olympic level competition? But that's beside the point, multihulls should be in the Olympics because there is no good reason for them not to be.

& WHERE is our youth multihull development team?!