ah... but I am not arguing cat sailor... just high performance apparent wind machines.... skiffs and cats are different then 470s and lasers. boards/kites will be different again.

There are so few woman cat sailors at the elite level before the Mixed Multihull discipline... it will be tough to argue either way... if Carolihn Brower competes and wins... does it prove my point??? Not really.

The virtually complete lack of Usual suspects in the class was appealing for many countries..... everyone started off at about the same level and you have a shot.

I would look at the woman's skiff ranks... they had a bit more of a pipeline before woman's skiffs made the games.

One other Cat example came to mind... the Swedes had a guy with a medal in stars (I think) who jumped onto the Tornado for his next campaign... it did not go well (Two or three cycles ago). mind you he had 1000s of hours into the game and a medal as well.. but you need to be putting that time into the exact skills you need.