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?

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?