Well, we have scrapped our hiking straps. We found that we almost never used them. Upwind in conditions where you could use them to hike the boat down I prefer to concentrate on my steering and let my crew trim the boat down. My crew is 1.97m tall, so he do a lot for our stability by just bending his knees or straightening up. Or I go out on the wire and let him pop in/out.

Downwind they could be useful to keep the skipper in position, but we found that they was not really neccesary. BTW: We dont have footstraps for the crew at the transoms either. Crew has learnt to stay in place anyway, and his verbal feedback keep my helming more controlled (read: not as erratic and fast helming). Only needed footstraps for him once the last season, and that was becouse I misjugded the conditions and buried the lee bow. The flat decks on the T make it stop really fast when you do that..
We sail both distance races and windward/leewards, and dont miss the hiking straps.