From Scuttlebut Europe:
two Views on the current situation.

The Olympic Classes - Paul Henderson
Olympic Classes:
Having been involved in the selection of the Olympic Classes for 30 years at ISAF it is interesting to see that nothing has changed. Personal bias always prevails. If the vote goes your way the ISAF Council is brilliant. If your personal or those of your country's medal chances are not served the ISAF Council are dysfunctional. Here goes on my bias. Deja Vu!

Overview:
TV and Media: No matter what sailing does we will never get much live Olympic TV. The feed is there but the individual country broadcasters usually do not pick it up as Athletics, Football, Basketball etc fills their broadcasts. Sailing gets very high niche market internet hits especially live mark-by-mark roundings. The print media loves heroes and human interest stories. The equipment is secondary. The many daily E-Mail newsletters have added another dimension to sailing journalism.

Heroes: In both Sydney and Athens the international print media followed the Star #1 as that was were the heroes were: Grael, Cayard, MacDonald, Loofs, Rohart, Percy, Bromby etc. Whether a boat goes 18 kts or 10 kts is unimportant. Sailors do! The heroes from the Boards usual evolve into Tornado sailors. The Laser and Finn heroes move up into the Keelboats Men or Women. The IOC wants the heroes and the best which is why Baseball was dropped because the Major League players are not at the Olympics.

Elite: The Olympics are for the best and should not become a Junior Regatta. The IOC has addressed this issue by initiating a Youth Olympics and those who want to promote youth sailing should focus on that regatta in Singapore.

High-Performance: All Olympic Classes are high-performance. No one has ever been able to define that term. This is especially true with the sailors as they must perform at the highest possible level in all events. Call them Cats or Skiffs but do not insult other classes by tagging them low performance in comparison. Paul Elvstrom once said: "It is harder to build a class then design a new one". The Star, Laser, Tornado and Finn have proven this.

Classes:
Keelboats must be kept both for Men and Women. It also provides the infrastructure for the Paralympics. Yesterday I was in Miami and there were over 100 Star boats at their WC. I thought it was a Laser Regatta.

Women must have a keelboat class. I prefer Fleet as that is inclusive but Match is acceptable also. Fleet or Match is format not the event and keeping the Keelboat is the key.

The singlehanders are the essence of the Olympics and the now 5 should be kept.

Boards have diminished greatly in acceptance over the last two decades but should remain. Laser is unchallenged. The Laser Radial has been a great success and the number of nations at their Worlds was the best ever for women. The Finn is essential as it provides a singlehander for larger men.

That leaves 3 Events of 10. If ISAF is held to 10 then my bias really comes out. I like Cats and Skiffs because they must be sailed not Air-Rowed around the course with Kinetics.

The problem then arises is what to do with the 470? Fortunately I am no longer on that hot seat. 470 is excellent women's boat and the 29er should be first put into the new Youth Olympics. It is sad that the IOC is holding Sailing to an agreement made to reduce from 11 as the reasons originally invoked 4 years ago are no longer valid.

Hopefully someone with influence will get to Jacques Rogge to delay the erosion till 2016. If that could happen ISAF should then keep both Men and Women 470 hosted for 2012 in the #1 sailing nation today.

Sailing would then have relative peace for at least another 4 years.

More To This Than Meets The Eye? - Andy Rice
Not everyone has welcomed ISAF's new submission with open arms. The UK Catamaran Racing Association's Simon Morgan sent SailJuice this response to the submission, and Simon questions some of the language used by ISAF in this new document.

Here is Simon's interpretation of things:

This is a welcome move in the right direction by ISAF, but it may sadly turn into a public relations disaster, the more closely it is publicly examined, because the leadership's proposal is legally imprecise and open to suspicion of bias, to which its Members have now become highly sensitised.

Firstly, ISAF Members (MNA's) should be congratulated for responding to the public concerns of the sailing community. It is impressive not only how widespread but also how comprehensive are their initiatives in seeking a better solution. They include submissions from 15 countries and 2 international classes on the selection of Events. Should a majority of Council vote in favour of change, but fail to reach the additional two-thirds hurdle that the leadership seeks to impose, (perhaps unnecessary at this juncture) they also include a further dozen submissions for multihull equipment to be considered alongside monohull equipment for the currently approved Events.

Strategically, there are also proposals to ask IOC for an 11th Event and to set up a new Multihull Committee, like Windsurfing. These are from nations rich and poor, large and small and all around the world.

They all should be thanked, especially those who have had to back on their original decision for doing the decent thing in saying, sorry we simply did not think about the multihull community because you were politically unorganised. Having read your lengthy report and listened to the enormous body of public opinion against the Estoril Events decision, we see that you are a significant part of the sport we all love and have organised yourself and we want to find a place for you somewhere in our "big church".

But has ISAF leadership got that message?

Remember the November Council Meeting where Charley Cook "proposed that the voting process could be simplified...by making a slight modification".

Remember Arve Sundheim's letter to Members in November which excused the failure to advise Councillors of the 2002 IOC document on guidelines for Olympic Events entitled "Recommendations" on the basis that this was not "a policy of the IOC to recommend that if any events are to be removed from the Olympic Programme for sailing that it could be keelboat"

Remember the Minutes of the February Executive Meeting that responded to the host nation's concerns by describing the choice of Events as "closed", but now "recognizing the level of concerns over the decision as per the submissions received" the selection of Events is no longer closed.

If the leadership were genuinely open-minded why propose that Council "reaffirm" rather than "review" and why continue "upon reaffirmation", rather than "if reaffirmed", when such alternative neutral language is available? The accompanying press release continues in similar manner "The Executive Committee intent in making this submission is to bring to a close the current speculation challenging the Council decision".

The proposal is even more grudging in that the Executive oddly asks Councillors to reaffirm rather than reject their decision. This raises questions about impartiality. -- More on sailjuiceblog.com/2008/04/07/more-to-this-than-meets-the-eye/