Ref: http://www.tornado.org/html/news_article.asp?ArticleID=205

The class will vote over wether to implement a minimum crew weight.

Unfortunately, the ITA site dont specify what the suggested limit is, so it is all a bit theorethical at this point. Anybody who know what the target min. crew weight is?

In pounds, I thought that it was 290-310, but that was before the spi-rig.

Why would the Tornado Class want to specify a minimum crew weight? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

A fair few cat classes do Mary; I think most of the Nacra classes do and so do some of the Hobie classes.

That's my point.

No classes had minimum crew weights pre-Hobie. All the beach cats that came after Hobie, for some reason, also had minimum crew weights, apparently because Hobie did it. I could never figure out why. And nobody has ever come up with a really good explanation for why.

So why would the Tornado class, which was pre-Hobie, suddenly decide to have minimum crew weights? This is an Olympic class!!

What conceivable reason could there be for a minimum crew weight?

I can understand why they have established MAXIMUM crew weights for some of the women's dinghy events so the women don't have to bulk up just to be competitive.

The only reason I can think of for the Tornado Class suddenly wanting to have a minimum crew weight is that they know the Olympics in China are going to be in very, very light air. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Whoops. Sorry, I just read the attachment. So I was right, and that IS the reason. Bad reason.

I think the best reason to have a minimum crew weight is to make it more fair for all competitors, not just ones that weigh 100lbs.

I had read of a big regatta pre Olympics where the winds were light and heaier crews had no chance.....The boat obviously needs more sail.

Would it not also be true that in heavy winds the light would be challenged? perhaps there should be no crew.

A boat is a boat... the wind does what it may and let all commers do their best.

The law is an butt.

I think I finally get the picture, and I don't like what I see. ISAF should not allow a minimum crew weight limit for the Tornado, because it would be potentially discriminatory in terms of gender, age, size, and ethnic origin. This is supposedly an "open" class.

I do hope that there is a rule that prevents teams from campaigning for four years or two years or whatever toward the Olympics and then winning their national trials and then, based upon the advance weather report for the Olympic venue, dropping one team member and replacing with either a light person or a heavy person, depending on the forecast. THAT would not be fair.

If there are special circumstances where a crew member can be replaced at that point (like death), they should have to replace the team member with someone of basically the same weight as the person being replaced.

Wouldn't it be discriminatory to NOT have a minimum weight and thus giving the lighter teams a clear advantage? What is wrong with the lighter teams putting some corrector weights on the boat like the f18 class?

The Tornado Class has been around for 40 years and has been in the Olympics for 30 years, and now all of a sudden they need a minimum crew weight limit?

What's next -- a maximum weight limit when they are going to sail the Olympics in an area where it blows 25 every day, with big seas, in a country where the people are big?
How do you do corrector UNweights?

To a point, even in windy conditions, I'd still prefer to have less weight on board than more. What that means is even in windy conditions VMG downwind is at worst unchanged and often slightly better than the fatter teams.

Something that is different now to 40, 30, 20 or even 10 years ago is the state of rig tune & sail design. Both have come a very long way and the sail/mast combos give very efficient sails with minimal drag for up wind sailing which once again will diminish any (small) advantage the heavier teams might have on this point of sailing.

Tiger Mike

Do you not think that a minimum crew weight gives the heavier crews a slight advantage...like knocking the other sailors out all together. If you can't face allcomers you are a girls blouse. Seoul had heavy weather so the heavier crews had their day then.

The more I think about this the worse it gets.. I don't think that the sailors of the host nation should be allowed to sail...home advantage and all of that. While we are at it sailmakers should not be allowed to race as they have a clear advantage. Let's ban anyone who has ever sailed a boat before as they clearly might have a winning edge. There should be a height restriction on basket ball players because we can't grow people tall enough.

If you are too heavy, stop eating so many pies!

Can they move that weight around the boat like the fat guys can? No. So the fat guys all have an advantage at the get go. Are the light guys allowed to wear any weight section in their suits to gain advantage in heavy weather? If not why not? IF this applied, the heavy people could all cut something useless off like their heads in the light.
Big people being bullies and bad losers, that's what it is all about. : )
I say, for example, just have white, 14 stone, English speaking, North Americans in the class.

So here is a question guys. Are the weight restricted classes ruled that way to create a winning edge for the target market of buyers? I can see no other reason. Comes back to money..the idea the Olympics will go that way fits well with the way of our World.

Yes, I have gone into hiding and expect incoming.

I think you are on the right track, Warbird.

A possibility that just occurred to me is that they could do sailing like wrestling and separate them into various weight categories.

I don't know about North Americans, but I am guessing that the Europeans, and especially the Germans, would be the ones pushing for the minimum weight. And the Germans seem to carry a lot of political "weight" in voting on class decisions like that. (At least they have in the past; and I don't remember whether it was at class level or ISAF level.)

The only reason I can see for this added rule for the tornados is to stop already very fit sailors from going trough with an extreme and unhealthy weight loss program. It might be Pusan over again, but the odds are slim for that. I would not be surprised if many teams are planning some diet and excercise regimes better suited for a Gulag camp than olympic athletes if they qualify.

One of the german teams, the Mittelmeier brothers, was _very_ lightweight when they started sailing in the Tornado class. They would no be where they are today if there was an min. weight limit.

I think TigerMike is spot on, the heavyweights dont have that large an advantage in a breeze anymore and really suffer downwind in low/medium conditions.

The last thing the struggling Tornado class needs is a rule to reduce the number of qualified participants and complicate regatta administration by requiring weigh-ins.

Anywhere by Qingdao, the class naturally favors reasonably healthy crews around 300lbs, but minimum weight would be yet another reason to not invite ones wife and kids to race underweight with you.



The folks who will qualify for the Olympics are historically ~300lb 2-man crews. Many of these teams (especially the taller ones) are pretty darn lean to start with. A rule that would keep them healthy would have to be pretty darn close to their current weight, IMHO, which would maximize the exclusion problem. Sigh. If we pass this, lets repeal it in the Fall of 2008!

--Glenn (overweight Tornado crew *opposed* to min weight)

Hey, what do you mean with "the struggling Tornado class"?
Is the class struggling compared to earlier? How?

I think the class is pretty much status quo, as it has been for the last 20 years..