Checking in late....but quite simply....An Olympic dream serves as motivation for our youth!! My 16 year old son is motivated to get into Cat sailing as he sees it as exciting, and a potential path to the Olympics. That by itself would be enough but Secondly.....anyone looking to launch a major campaign and therefor looking for SPONSORS (a particularly tough proposition for US sailors), knows that participation (of our sport)in the Olympics is a major boost to their efforts.

I agree that there are many other good comments in this thread, but these two bits are all the reason I need to be passionate about MH and sailing (in general) participation in the Olympics.

back to lurk mode...