Why should the entirety of the sailing world be forced to make up for the struggling economy of one or another countries??
??
Your personal humanitarian ideologies have no place in a discussion of sports, no place in a discussion of sailing, no relevance to the issue of Tornado as Olympic material.
Not everyone has the "right" to sail. No one has a right to anything that they haven't earned, on a separate note. Olympic competitors in the US are less funded than European Olympic hopefuls, Canadian sailors, Puerto Rican sailors, etc. etc. . Almost all American campaigners spend a good deal of time and energy funding their careers through sponsorship or with their own money. You see that there is no advantage, even to the sailors in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Sailors from other nations still manage to continue in competition, if poor countries want to develop sailing programs it isn't the obligation of other nations (at the disadvantage of their own constituents) to provide for this. This HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SPORT. It should have no reflection on the Olympic classes.
Additionally, US Sailing (and the Olympic Sailing effort) has no duty to provide anything to it's members based solely on their "right" to certain things, it's duty is only to the consensus of it's members and only additionally, to accurately represent the interests (as so expressed) of it's majority. This is where US Sailing has gone wrong. Massively wrong.
Why has the 'open' classification of the Tornado contributed to its being a male dominated class?
It hasn't. I'd be willing to bet that if one looked at the numbers, sailing would be a predominately male sport (perhaps not by much).
If you don't believe that, as a cat sailor you should realize that multihull sailing IS a predominately male sport. There are more male skippers than female skippers in general, and outside classes like the hobie 16, women become more scarce, even as crews. The hardest Olympic classes to get women involved in are 1. Multihull; 2. Skiff (though this has a better youth base: the 29er).
Resolved: women in multihull sailing are few. This is reason number one why there are not many women sailing Tornados. Also, consider the fact that youth sailing has a few basic manifestations: opti, laser, 420 (29er and sl16/h16 are MUCH MUCH smaller classes, MUCH less popular, MUCH more obscure in youth sailing [ and yes, I realize that this is a situation to which many people are making an effort to find a solution, me included] )
To jump from intense training in a 420 to a 470 is easier for someone than making that same jump into a Tornado. It's all about accessability. And that is essentially reason number two why women are few in Tornado sailing. It isn't readily accessable to anyone, much less women.
Three: the Tornado (and god knows I love this boat) is not an ideal design for an all women crew. BUT, the reason why this is less of an issue than it appears to be, is that in some ways it allows (potentially) the class to fulfill it’s title as "open". It is more likely that there will be mixed gender teams because a) it isn’t ideal to have two women sail together, and b) if there were successful mixed gender teams they would most likely be lighter than the all male teams, which would be the disadvantage to an all male team. (Overwhelmingly, the reason I believe that there are not mixed gender crews is specifically because the lack of development of the class (or multihulls in general) on the youth/beginner levels. By the way: in terms of any sort of gender equity the Tornado class is shooting itself in the foot with the minimum weight limit proposal. There is no room for mixed gender in the class with that rule.
Just some thoughts. Have at them.
