Views from a Medallist

Marcelien de Koning is not a girl for standing still. Having bagged a silver in the 470 at Qingdao, she flew off to compete in the New York Marathon (completed in 3 hours 50 minutes, 9476th place out of 39,000), and then jetted straight back across the pond to the ISAF Conference in Madrid.

The Netherlands sailor was there in her capacity as chairwoman of the Athletes Commission (AC), set up just over a year ago as a representative voice for the Olympic sailors, with one rep per class. The AC was angling to get a representative on to ISAF Council, but this decision was deferred until May next year, so at the moment the Commission is a toothless organisation. Even so, de Koning has some strong opinions, and as successful athlete (three-time 470 world champion in addition to the silver medal), her views will get noticed.

I asked de Koning about a number of things. She wanted it pointed out that these are her personal opinions as a sailor, not as chairwoman of the AC:

The current decision-making structure of ISAF: “In the past 12 years, sailing has gone nowhere. In the end the Council will always decide what's best for themselves. The Athletes Commission really liked the submission from Yachting Australia, we agreed with 98% of it, and we hope ISAF will implement it. The ways things are structured now, you can never follow a long-term strategy.”

On the future of a women's High Performance class. “I think it will next happen for 2016. If it doesn’t, then ISAF doesn't hear the cry from the female youth wanting a high performance skiff."

470 or 29erXX this time? "470. I wouldn't want to see the 470 go out next time either. It is a good boat. But I don't think we were quite ready for the 29erXX, and I would prefer to be sailing a 49er Minus Minus than a 29er Plus Plus!!!"

What about women's match racing. “Match racing has to overcome a lot of problems. For the first event in Miami next year, the women will have to pay $2500 to enter, which I think is a lot of money. Also, a lot of sailors don’t want anything to do with jury or umpires because crucial mistakes are made which can cost sailors a year's salary. To have a sport which is even more reliant on umpires is not that attractive for many current Olympic sailors.”

Question: Do Olympic sailors deserve a seat at the table of ISAF Council, or is it better that they are kept out of the politics for other people to decide on their behalf? Any other comments or observations about de Koning's views?

Broken Glass

Former 470 campaigner from the US, and now sailing a 29er, Jen Glass wrote her response to the ISAF Council decision for SailJuice:

"As a young female skiff sailor and the 29erXX Representative on the 29er Executive Board, today's ISAF Council vote brought me great disappointment. Following six years' campaigning in the 470 I gave the 29er a try on a whim in between quadrenniums. I was instantly hooked on skiff sailing and the true athleticism it brings to the sport.

Not long after stepping into the 29er I had the opportunity to try out the 29erXX. It was amazing! A boat where both the skipper and crew needed to be coordinated, acutely aware of their actions, and work together with the boat. And when you get all of these things right, you're generously rewarded with amazing boatspeed.You can't sail the 29erXX without grinning from ear to ear. Now here's a boat I can spend a few quadrenniums in!

The 29erXX is the future of sailing. We want something fast, fun, physically challenging and extreme. But today ISAF chose to keep us in 1963.

Photo: Dave Keane

So I just have one question for the Council. Why put the folks on the Equipment, Events and Women's Committees through the countless hours they put into their research and eventual decision, if you're not going to follow what all three of them recommend?

Lady sailors, let's vote by sailing.

The 29erXX will join the 49er at their World Championship July 12-19th on Lake Garda, Italy. The class is now sponsored by Seiko and the event promises to be amazing. Come and join us!"

Question: What chance of a women's high performance skiff being voted in by ISAF in four years' time?

Generation Gap

Have you ever heard of the story of the boiling frog? To borrow from that font of reliable knowledge, Wikipedia: "The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out." To learn more, click here.

Anyway, sorry, I digress from the main story, that for the second consecutive year ISAF Council has ignored the recommendations of its expert committees and sub-committees and opted - as it invariably does - for the status quo. I suppose any of us that wanted progress should be happy that the 29erXX even made it this far, and the 19:16 vote suggests it is only a matter of time before the women get their high performance doublehander. The trouble is that in the Olympic world, 'a matter of time' is measured out in batches of four years.

The earliest that women will now be able to compete for a medal in a modern high performance skiff is the 2016 Games, which would mean the women got their high performance boat 16 years after the men got theirs, the 49er having first appeared in Sydney 2000. It's a sad indictment of the inherent conservatism and lack of vision of ISAF's top table. Remember that ISAF Council can't even take credit for the 49er's inclusion. That was the then-President of ISAF, the maverick Paul Henderson, who railroaded the 49er past the selection process. Sometimes dictatorship gets better results than democracy.

So who voted 470 and who voted 29erXX? Er, we don't know, because it was a conducted under a secret ballot. And only yesterday Goran Petersson was telling us: "it is the Council who are the true democratic voice of ISAF." And here was me thinking that openness and accountability were the underpinnings of a democratic process.

Apparently the decision to opt for a secret voting process was in response to the venom and vitriol from some rather rabid supporters of the multihull lobby, who published Council members' email and phone numbers on public internet forums and so forth. I have some sympathy with that, as I came in for a bit of hate mail myself, and I was on the multihull sailors' side! So heaven knows what the Council members who voted keelboat instead of multihull were getting through their electronic letter boxes.

But even so, this is politics. You expect mudslinging, and if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. The actions of a few email terrorists are not sufficient reason for Council to go all secret on us. Quite apart from the fact that it ain't democratic, we can't learn much from what happened today either. As the CEO of the 49er class, Marcus Spillane, said to me: "We'd like to know why people voted the way they did so we can talk to them and understand what it was about the 29erXX that wouldn't have worked for them. As it is, we remain in the dark about that, and so it was an opportunity wasted."

Some Council members said they were in favour of the 29erXX in principle, but that 'now' wasn't the right time. Well, when exactly is the right time? There will never be a right time. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and get on with it.

The Council member from Singapore said it would be unfair on the 470 women who competed in the Asian Games two years ago, and that keeping the 470 was the right thing to do because their investment would be protected. Crikey! With logic like that, no longer we still have classes in the Olympics that date back to the Ark. You've got to change some time!

And by the way, those Asian Games that he refers to. How many women's 470s were competing in Doha in December 2006? Four, apparently. Four! Perhaps if the 29erXX had got in, then they could have sold their secondhand 470s to some men's teams instead? D'ya think? Or maybe all four boats were gelcoated in Barbie pink and therefore worthless to a male secondhand market...

Another Council member noted that these were grave times for the global economy and so change would be expensive. Yes, tell that to the girls who are going to have buy a new Elliott 6. Besides which, there is already a good secondhand market of 29er hulls out there in the world. The conversion to a 29erXX is peanuts by Olympic standards. Being a manufacturer one-design, the campaign costs of a 29erXX would be cheaper than a 470, which offers good value sailing but is still subject to hull and rig development costs.

For the second year running we've seen a good week of progressive discussions hit the crash barriers as ISAF Council squashes a real opportunity for change. Every four years the Olympic Regatta falls further and further behind the modern sailing world as the status quo is allowed to remain. How many more Olympic cycles before the IOC dismisses sailing as an outdated irrelevance with no youth or sex appeal?

Of course, I'm exaggerating. We're not in crisis yet. But did you ever hear that story about the boiling frog?

Question: Was this an opportunity missed? Or were ISAF Council right to stick with the tried and tested 470?

Will Council vote for old or new?

"What about the other skiffs?" has been a common question that I've heard in phone conversations, Skype messages and emails since posting yesterday's story. It's a fair question, and one I'll deal with in due course. The 29erXX was just one of a number of boats that put itself up for consideration at ISAF's Evaluation Trials in Hyeres last year, and yet here we have just the 29erXX against the women's 470. Questions need asking about how this came to be, but not now, not in the next 24 hours. Right now, the only question that matters is whether it will be 470 or 29erXX.

Photo: Dave Keane

As an ex-470 sailor I have an affection for the venerable old boat, and wish it could still remain in the Olympic line-up, rather than yield to the half-arsed, ill-thought-out new discipline currently being crow-barred into the 2012 Games, women's match racing.

But given that it's a fight between new skiff and old dinghy, I'd vote for the skiff. The 470 has had its chance to attract hoards of women into Olympic sailing. It's been moderately successful, certainly more so than the Yngling, but it hasn't exactly been a runaway success. The 29erXX has a greater likelihood of attracting young women into top-level competition. For that reason alone, it deserves to succeed.

Will ISAF Council see things the same way? I hope so, but I'm not betting my house on it. In an ISAF press release sent out today, ISAF President Göran PETERSSON (SWE) says the Council provides the final, worldwide perspective on issues. "We must remember it is the Council who are the true democratic voice of ISAF. They represent the Member Nations who combined form the International Sailing Federation, and who individually represent the sailors, clubs, classes and sailing organizations within nations." If only I could share his faith in the 'democratic' process.

The President also paid tribute to the work of all the Committees who have contributed to the debate in Madrid this week. "It would be impossible for one group to incorporate all the expertise that would be needed to review the range of issues within the sailing world. The Committees are crucial to the work of ISAF as they provide an expert forum for issues to be discussed and voted on, with their recommendations bringing a vast range of knowledge to the Council table. I thank them for all their work, both during this Conference and over the past four years," he said.

Not much to disagree with there. Except that last year the Events Committee laid out a strategy which was largely ignored by Council, where too often the thinking by individuals on the Council is self-serving, tactical and short-termist. Please, Council, prove me wrong this time. The sub-committees have made their views known, so please consider their arguments rather than do what you were going to do anyway. Otherwise, what is the point of 400-odd people flying in and staying in expensive hotels for more than a week, when little of the week's discussions comes to anything?

Council, you've been given your lead to do something out of the ordinary, to make a decision that might excite a new generation of female sailors to get on the Olympic campaign trail. To borrow a phrase from another recent vote between old and new: "Yes, you can."

Question: “Yes, they can.” But will they? Where are you putting your money on tomorrow’s vote?