THE OLYMPIC BOAT DEBATE AT THE ISAF
The events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition are the main focus of the day at the ISAF Annual Conference as the Event Committee meet in Estoril, Portugal.
The ISAF Events Committee is tasked with recommending to the ISAF Council the events to be used for the Olympic Sailing Competition. The events are selected five years ahead of the Olympic Games, so at this Annual Conference the decision is for the ten events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition. The ISAF Council will make the final decision on the ten events in their meeting from 8-10 November - the Events Committee are affectively the experts and their recommendation will help inform the Councils decision.
The ISAF Council, at the 2007 ISAF Mid-Year Meetings, had decided on a split of six male/open events and four female events, and drawn up a list from which the ten events could be selected Like the Womens Sailing Committee yesterday, the Events Committee broke the decision on the ten events down into several stages. First up was the decision on the discipline of the womens keelboat event (if selected): match or fleet racing. The Events Committee mirrored the decision of the Womens Sailing Committee and decided on match racing.
The voting process went through several rounds. First of all the multihull option was rejected from the womens slate. Next up the keelboat (match
racing) missed out. In the mens events, the voting process ended with a choice between the two person dinghy and the keelboat to fill the sixth event slot. The two person dinghy won the day, making the Events Committee recommendation to Council for the following events:
Windsurfer - men
One person dinghy - men
One person dinghy heavy - men
Two person dinghy high performance - men Two person dinghy - men Multihull - open Windsurfer - women One person dinghy - women Two person dinghy - women Two person dinghy high performance - women
The Events Committee will now pass their recommendation on to the ISAF Council, who will decide the events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition in their meeting from 8-10 November.
