The disturbing factor in listening to most peoples interpretation of results is that they only seem to look at the top finishes. The top sailors are going to win no matter the sail or platform. A truer evaluation of competing designs would be to look at the mid pack guys. When someone who always scored mid to lower pack gets on a new platform and now starts consistently placing 3rd and 4th, you now have a much better measuring stick as to whether 1 design may be an improvement over another.
I tend to lean toward the side of listing the manufacturer brands in the results...however, I think to assume that you can determine which equipment is better than the others by looking at the results is erroneous at best. I was a mid-fleet sailor last year and have recently been knocking on the door of the front pack. I would be pretty insulted at the suggestion that it was the boat (in reality it's the same boat and same sails from a year ago). Believe you me, in most cases the sailors are capable of improving more than the equipment.
And to that note - from my vantage point, new sails and equipment make me better mostly because they eliminate an excuse and cause me to look elsewhere for a performance gain.
