Olympic Events Under The Spotlight

The events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition are the main focus of the day at the ISAF Annual Conference as the Event Committee meet in Estoril, Portugal.

The ISAF Events Committee is tasked with recommending to the ISAF Council the events to be used for the Olympic Sailing Competition. The events are selected five years ahead of the Olympic Games, so at this Annual Conference the decision is for the ten events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition. The ISAF Council will make the final decision on the ten events in their meeting from 8-10 November – the Events Committee are affectively ‘the experts’ and their recommendation will help inform the Council’s decision.

The ISAF Council, at the 2007 ISAF Mid-Year Meetings, had decided on a split of six male/open events and four female events, and drawn up a list from which the ten events could be selected (click here to see the Council minutes):

Men – Select six events from

Windsurfer
One person dinghy
One person dinghy heavy
Two person dinghy
Two person dinghy high performance
Keelboat
Multihull – open or men

Women – Select four events from

Windsurfer
One person dinghy
Two person dinghy
Two person dinghy high performance
Keelboat
Multihull

Like the Women’s Sailing Committee yesterday, the Events Committee broke the decision on the ten events down into several stages. First up was the decision on the discipline of the women’s keelboat event (if selected): match or fleet racing. The Events Committee mirrored the decision of the Women’s Sailing Committee and decided on match racing.

The voting process went through several rounds. First of all the multihull option was rejected from the women’s slate. Next up the keelboat (match racing) missed out. In the men’s events, the voting process ended with a choice between the two person dinghy and the keelboat to fill the sixth event slot. The two person dinghy won the day, making the Events Committee recommendation to Council for the following events:

Windsurfer – men
One person dinghy – men
One person dinghy heavy – men
Two person dinghy high performance – men
Two person dinghy – men
Multihull – open
Windsurfer – women
One person dinghy – women
Two person dinghy – women
Two person dinghy high performance – women

The Events Committee will now pass their recommendation on to the ISAF Council, who will decide the events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition in their meeting from 8-10 November.

Also meeting in Estoril today were the Offshore Committee and the Constitution Committee. The first of three days of ISAF Council meetings begins tomorrow at 14:30.

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