Chris 249 said..

cammd said..

Why can't foilers work in Sydney Harbour, or Hamburg or Berlin or inland lakes

Well, it could in some areas. But many areas, like the ones mentioned, people very often sail in light and fluky winds, and it seems that to make grass-roots competition and training work you need to be able to sail at a certain time each week, whether or not it's 9 knots with big shifts and lulls to 6 knots or less, or with a big hole near the windward mark. Or when the major event for the year gets wind like this...

We can see that in the sort of other craft that people sail in the major population areas. As one example, there's only one cat fleet and one (small and not very active) foiler fleet in all of Sydney Harbour, because most people there prefer stuff that handles enclosed and fluky waterways better. It's the same in Berlin, Hamburg, Long Island etc. People there aren't stupid or wimpy, they choose other types because other types work better in those major cities.

Foiling could work in really well if they go ahead with the multi-discipline approach at the Olympics, but to have a foiler as the only class for windsurfing would seem to exclude a lot of people. There's no reason for them to be ****ting all over the rest of the sport with their claim that there is only ONE future for windsurfing.

It's just an advertisement, not an attack on the rest of the sport, they are well invested in the rest of the sport. Even branding a Windsurfer LT I think.

cammd said..
Chris 249 It's interesting, I'm relatively un educated in ways to bend the rules of Olympic's but many of the issues you raise are well known to myself and no doubt most people in the sailing world including I presume World Sailing.

Given that the issues are well known why go down this path if it is counter to the goals of accessibility and gender equality and affordability etc. Its easy pass WS as fools or conspirator's or something else but logically you must assume the people making the decisions are intelligent and informed. I have met the Australian chairperson of the WS committee to put forth this recommendation, she didn't strike me as being the devil. I think she may even be sympathetic to windsurfing having been a windsurfer herself.

I hope your wrong, I think in order to stay in the games, to meet the IOC goals World Sailing needed to go down this road. I am sure it hurt many of the "old boys" to dump the Finn. Foiling is new and it looks good and hopefully it works. If it does result in killing Olympic windsurfing its most likely just delayed what would have been coming otherwise.

I certainly don't think that World Sailing and SK are the devil or mis-informed; Sarah is definitely very, very smart.
My guess is that they are under pressure both consciously and subconciously from areas like the sailing media. I used to work in that game and it can really, really affect your thinking. You are always under pressure from advertisers to promote the new stuff and to get sailors to junk their old gear, and these days many of those in the media just sail on advertiser's stuff and get flown around by regatta sponsors to exotic locations full of pros with the latest kit. Their life is very, very different from that of the normal sailor who races every weekend and has to pay for their own gear. You can get a completely misleading idea about what most sailors actually do, and why they normally have to race on confined waters at a particular time, on gear that doesn't cost a bomb.

Personally I think there's also other subconscious pressures; for example for journos it's very easy to write about the latest new craze, but much harder to write an interesting article about the sailing that most people do. Pumping out another article on why everyone (apart from the journo!) should buy the latest spectacular kit and burn their old stuff is very easy. Same for World Sailing - it's easy to say "the future is X" and think that you're being leading edge.

It seems that partly for this reason, much of the sailing media these days basically hates most of the established classes and likes to invent reasons to dump them. For example, there's a lot of evidence that the IOC has NO intention of dumping sailing from the Games, and that it's not as worried about TV ratings as many sailing journalists think. The journos aren't actually looking up the IOC Olympic Programme Commission criteria; doing research is too hard in these days when the media is squeezed so hard, and it's easier to dash off another opinion piece on why the Laser or RSX is crap.

The other thing is that for some reason sailing isn't very good at knowing its own history (perhaps because it's so complex with so many different disciplines and classes that tracking what works and what doesn't is hard) and therefore many of the lessons have been forgotten.

Or there is this. It makes some very good points that strike home to me:
www.downundersail.com/2018/05/11/opinion-olympic-sailing-still-pinnacle/

windsufering said..
The windsufer LT will be the largest sailing class in Australia

Sailing or racing ???

Does Aust has a windsurf coach anymore ?

Going by the figures shown in that article the LT is the largest class.
and it's only going to get bigger once we start racing them

windsufering said..
The windsufer LT will be the largest sailing class in Australia

FFS why would we want to watch Windsurfer LT's race in the Olympics. All this talk about accessibility & representation. The Olympics IS an Elite Athletic event. If Foiling fits the venue then so be it. It is the Pinacle of light wind racing at the moment.

Yes it is good news for WS. Let's now see how committed SA are to fund the boards - 3/10 medals up for grabs. The might need a coach to start with.

It was devastating news to hear we were losing Max. Looked like SA had totally abandoned windsurfing just as youth participation was surging and we finally have infrastructure (and great people) with the RQ centre of excellence for windsurfing.
But since that bad news SA has provided the NSW youth with 3 coaches . Jessica Crisp is coaching the RSX youth and Craig Ferris and Sam Trehan for RSX and Techno. The RSXers get about 2 days per month and the Bics one. That is an amazing coaching team and it is working out a treat.
Maybe SA has a plan and they just haven't told anyone
Max Gaubert is also offering RSX,Bic,raceboard coaching in NSW. I know he is pretty handy on a foil too

windsufering said..
Going by the figures shown in that article the LT is the largest class.
and it's only going to get bigger once we start racing them

No way. The Laser figures ignore the fact that there are so many Lasers that they have to split the fleet in two when the nationals are in the eastern states. The Masters sailed a completely different nationals with about 90 Radials and 70 standards, so there were actually about 160 Radials and 100 standards that did national titles.

Chris249 pretty sure there are plenty of weekend warrior windsurfers getting on foils, what are you saying.

Your argument kind of defeats itself, if cycling is capable of controlling gear why can't sailing.

Is the gold medal bike above a "one design" and are they all built by one manufacturer

No, the argument doesn't defeat itself. The point of the post was that the elite Olympians don't use the fastest possible gear. That's the truth.

The bike in the top pic is $14,000, plus at top level you'll need another wheelset and a power meter, so you're looking at $25000 or so. Sure, it's not as expensive as the British track bikes, but it's about 20 times the cost of a competitive club-level bike and it illustrates that the guys who build top level racing gear do NOT compete by bringing the price down.

Secondly, it's a road bike where I was referring to track bikes earlier. Cycling is a huge sport and companies make enough money to be able to spend shedloads developing top-level "halo" road bikes to promote their brand. They can spread the R & D costs across huge numbers of bikes. Windsurfing is far smaller and the economics are very different.

Thirdly, top road cyclists are sponsored and normally have to ride their sponsor's bikes at the Games, so the manufacturers have some control over the costs of what the top guys ride. Maybe that will happen with Olympic windsurfing, but I'd bet that it will be closer to the situation with track bikes - track cycling is a small discipline so most of the money comes from Olympic teams and the top ones don't care how much they spend on the bikes since they are not in the business of making money like bike manufacturers are.

Fourthly, I don't think anyone's talking about Olympic windsurfers that are as restricted as Olympic bikes. The UCI rules mean that bikes are close to one design, and very, very much more restricted than the proposed windsurfing rules.

The bike rules have a minimum weight - the proposed windsurfer doesn't. The bike rules restrict length and width- the proposed windsurfer rules don't. The bike rules restrict the aerodynamics - the proposed windsurfer rules don't. The cycling rules restrict things like sock length (yes, really!), saddle position, saddle angle, water bottles, the aerodynamic properties of the clothing and helmets, pedal position, frame dimensions, handlebar dimensions, etc etc etc. The proposed windsurfer rules don't.

If the Olympic windsurfer was going to be as restricted as the Olympic bikes they may be fairly cheap (or may not) but no one's talking about such tough restrictions. Although it's hard to compare the two, a Olympic board that was as restricted as an Olympic bike would possibly have a top speed of 26 knots and would weigh about 10kg. Since people are talking about boards that are less restricted, the costs may also rise.

I didn't say that weekend warriors couldn't sail foilers. I referred to sailing them every day. The issue is that the average weekend warrior cyclist from Berlin, Sydney, London or LA can get on a bike like the gold medal one, roll it out the front door at any hour on any day of the year, and ride it to training or to work. Even when you live on the waterfront, you can't sail a "high-performance" shortboard every day at any time - you have to wait for a decent breeze and normally have to go to fairly open water.

Finally, since I've already said "Foiling could work in really well if they go ahead with the multi-discipline approach at the Olympics" I have no idea why you appear to think I don't think it should be in the Games. I said it would work really well.

All I'm saying is that we, as a sport, could actually try to learn from other and more popular sports, and by actually reading what the organisation that chooses sports wants. What's wrong with that? Should we just stick our fingers in our ears and ignore what's happened to other sports?

New One Design bike class

New One Design windsurfing
Simples.

All good chris249, I misunderstood you, sorry for that

The recommendation mentioned the potential for increased costs due to multiple rigs and fin/foils but in the same paragraph mentioned they would most likely be offset by sponsorhip
.
I don't know how that would play out in the real world but I imagined it may be like the pwa, That is the brands sponsoring sailors, maybe it may only be the top (Gold fleet) sailors but if every brand is selling more stuff then there is more dollars to go around. Possible corporate sponsors, even discounted access to current gear saves dollars and keeps a good s/h market alive. Our current Techno Champion is currently sponsored by a brand to some extent I think, that why he names his Bic Techno "Starboard Rules" at every regatta. That could only increase if every brand is getting in on the action.

That also makes it more accessible for countries or sailors with less funds available than the rich countries.

Rob11 said..
@Chris249 and @ Windsufering, is there any topic on this forum you contribute to without arguing? Always the same lame arguments as well...

Rob, I apologise for coming across so argumentative. I'm just passionate about this sport and I've spent years studying the effect of technology on participation rates in sport and in particular sailing and windsurfing. Just as some people are passionate about speed fins or shaping, I'm passionate about this stuff and I want to see our sport grow again.

As far as the argument being "lame", it's based on doing things like interviewing four designers of current Olympic classes, and some designers of their rivals; the head scientist for the Australian Olympic team (the whole team, not just the sailors); Olympic coaches; the guy who ran the trials that selected the 49er; reading the IOC OPC reports for years; building up a database of class national title numbers in four countries dating back for 50 years to track trends, interviewing the former windsurfer dealer who ran the biggest-ever survey of the public perception of sailing, reading huge amounts of academic studies and other information on sports participation, rulemaking, corresponding with Jim Drake, etc etc etc etc going as far as getting copies of the accounts book for the guy who built the first racing centreboard boat, in 1790.

It's not "lame" - it's the product of a lot of work and analysis on an extraordinarily complicated subject. If someone had gathered so much information from so many experts on something like fin design, people here wouldn't be calling it "lame".