I find it very strange to be defending ISAF and ISAFs decisions! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
The Tornado process was a PR disaster for ISAF. The event committee which have both olympic sailors and other ISAF representatives had a very long and serious debate about which events would be the best for sailing and the games. They proposed both a multihull and a high performance dinghy for women (kind of a 49er for women). It was the highest decision making body in ISAF, the ISAF Council ( http://sailing.org/555.php ) which choose to disregard the proposal from their own expert group and toss the Tornado out with the womens high performanceskiff. We know the rest of the story and ISAF is still paying for it. As you can see ISAF Council dont have many well known sailors amongst them but they do represent their countries sailing associations.

Would you be opposed to actually checking out what "ISAF Recognized" and "ISAF International" status have to offer?