According to one of norways largest newspapers, the IOC proposes to drop sailing from the olympic games from 2012.

The argument used is that sailing does not generate enough media interest and TV-viewer.

Norwegian olympic gold medalist in the Europe class, Siren Sundby, is quoted with some pretty harsh statements. She thinks there are lots of potential viewers, but ISAF, IOC and the TV companies covering the olympics does not put enough effort into explaining and showing the sport in a understandable way to viewers.
She wants on-boat cameras (go RF-Cam), helicams (miniature helicopters with cameras) and display of laylines, who's ahead etc based on weather information uploaded from weather equipment and computer generated on-top of the TV images.

She compares the interest in sailing from the Olympics, with the interest Volvo Ocean Race gathers. Supposed to be 1.9bill viewers to the VOR.

I watched some of the matches from the last AC in New Zealand, and they did just what Sundy proposed. Made the sport intuitive and fun to watch even if you are not especially into sailing. (even my wife could se who was ahead..)


Any coverage on this in the english speaking media? I haven't seen anything yet, not even on ISAF's homepage.


Ref: (in norwegian..)
http://www.seilmagasinet.no/sm_lesmer.php?id=58c3c4edd79a7f776709148012b9a0cd

Is there a website or addy to which we can voice our displeasure to the IOC for this possible decision? Thanks

I’m not sure how true this is but given that IOC President Jacques Rogge is a former Olympic Sailor (’68 and ’72) I’d say that we are in good hands, at least I hope so.

The USA had Garry Jobson commentate and do a terrific job with the Olympics. They had the absolute best possible combination of explanation of sailing and commentating while showing the races. They showed about 20-40 Minutes of each class (only 15 min of tornado and I missed 10 of them). The problem was sailing was on at random times during the 1am-2am hour. It seemed like they did not have the choice of which class to show because they kept showing classes where the Americans were not doing too well.

It is not a sport that will ever draw television audiences in the USA. I was the only one at the club that watched at all. I actually can’t think of a sport in the Olympics that would draw less in the USA. I would have said curling, but you should have this bar we go to when they turned on curling.

Matt

There is a full report of the Olympic Programme Commission available at
http://www.olympic.org/uk/news/olympic_news/full_story_uk.asp?id=1349

A decision which sports will be dropped from the Olympic programme will be found by the IOC members by vote (after July 8th).
According to earlier press releases Golf, Rugby, Squash, Karate and Inline-skating could be included and Softball, Baseball, and Pentathlon have a chance of being excluded. No mention of sailing, though.

Ceitzi