The whole point about strict one desing racing is that you have exactly the same kit - the Dart 18 thing does raise some issues about quality (consistency) control. But the ethos of the Dart 18 is that they are still the same and the best sailor wins without the kit having any impact.

I am a boat tweaker but still see the attraction of sailing in a fleet of 300 Darts that are all the same.

sorry guys
We left the issue, it was about olympics, not about definitions. what's against
Formula racing in terms of the olympic spirit. The price is not higher. That's nonsense. That's only the fairy tale the manufacturer classes tell you to keep their monopoly and their hugh win margins.
In fact there are many olympic sports, which are naturally development classes and nobody complains. Think of bob sleigh (do you call it like this?). They spent fortunes of money to optimise aerodynamics and ice mechanics. Same in skiing etc.
But also normal sports like tennis, they use up to date rackets... Nobody forces them to use the old days shape as we do with forcing people to sail f*** slow classes like Star, Yngling, Soling and the worst Finn Dinghy.
The problem is that national youth sponsorship is focussing on these old day classes, no wonder that the young ones are leaving the sport.
So let's open Olympics for full development Formulas
(which are in my view e.g. F18, A-class), and get rid of
boring deadslow buckets.

I would like to go back to the quote from Paul Henderson in the first post of this thread. He said:

"I am a strong supporter of Cats as they must be sailed and Kinetics has very little effect. I would have two Cats one which is a simple off-the-beach class and possibly make it Mixed Doubles which would push women's participation over 40%."

Sounds good at first glance, but I am not sure that a class that requires mixed doubles (male-female teams) would work for sailing at the Olympic level.

Teams campaigning seriously for the Olympics have to do extensive traveling together and living together. To save money, I'm sure they stay in the same room or motorhome or whatever. To me this means the male-female team either have to be married to each other or both be single with no attachments to others. I can't imagine any normal husband letting his wife go trotting off around the world with another man -- and ditto for the normal wife. Of course, spouses could go along as support crew, but at what sacrifice in terms of their jobs and income, not to mention the travel expenses?

It also would not be a good option for married couples that have children, because of the extensive time away from home.

There just aren't a lot of Olympic-caliber, married sailing teams out there like Jay and Pease Glaser.

Mary

I agree 100% with your objections. However, there is a considerable political and marketing appeal in being the only sport to feature husband & wife or boyfriend & girlfriend or Parent & Child teams competing in the games.

This is the kind of situation that the press loves and chances are that it would make front page news for the three medalists in three countries every time. "Boyfriend & girlfriend Team Brings Home a Medal". "Will our Cat Sailing Olympic Team Get Married?". "Dad Happy with Mom and Son Medal".

This is great publicity for any sport. Practical or not, it would be excelent for the sport. And no boat is better then a cat for the task.

Your thoughts?

Good point Mary...... It also seems that the men are the winners here as they have two boats to choose from. Why not make the second class an all female disciplin if one was to be introduced.

No question. They have separate women's and men's categories for all of the Olympic disciplines except multihulls. Am I wrong?

The classes are :

Windsurfer Men - Mistral
Windsurfer Women - Mistral
Single-handed Dinghy Women - Europe
Single-handed Dinghy Open - Laser
Single-handed Dinghy Men - Finn
Double-handed Dinghy Men - 470
Double-handed Dinghy Women - 470
Double-handed Dinghy Open - 49er
Multihull Open - Tornado
Keelboat Men - Star
Keelboat Women - Yngling

The multihulls are the only Olympic sailing discipline of a particular type of boat that do not have a category specifically for women. They do it for every other type of boat but not for the multihulls. Why?

Actually, there should be three multihull classes: Women, Men and Open. Not including the "mixed" class.

Well, right now we are fortunate to have just one multihull class. If we are going to push for another multihull class, it has to be done in terms of women competing, because the IOC is pressuring all the Olympic events to increase equality for women. I have no idea WHY, but we might as well take advantage of it in terms of sailing.

The ONLY way we are going to get another multihull into the Olympics is as a female-only class. It's a political, gender-specific issue. The Tornado has to be designated male-only (which it already is, in effect) and another multihull class designated female-only, whether single-person or two-person.