But we still haven't received one solid reason WHY other than "we don't want to be part of that culture" (someone said something like that). What are the specific drawbacks? I think we're assuming that a lot of things would change without really understanding the issues. I suggest that that boat class's quality will get better at some expense to cost and that the quality of the competition will increase.

People are really starting to spend money on custom F18 pieces parts but we've all sort-a agreed that those guys probably would have beaten us on any other boat anyway. It's what I call the "Nth degree" - buying all that stuff helps you less with your boat speed than your mindset so you quit worrying about who has the best stuff....but back to the point....

What damage would be done to a class to have it be an Olympic class? So the culture might shift but to what and by how much? We're not talking about 200 teams infiltrating your class ranks. We're talking about, at most, 10 to 15 Olympic hopefuls in any given country.