2008 ISAF Mid-Year meeting |
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The sailing events for the 2012 Olympic Games will remain unchanged, following a vote by the International Sailing Federation Council today at its mid-year meeting in Qingdao, China.
A controversial vote by ISAF Council during its annual conference in November 2007 led to the decision not to include a modern high performance dinghy for women, the expulsion of the multihull event and the introduction of a match racing format for the women’s keelboat event.
The RYA lobbied ISAF and fellow Member National Authorities, believing that the decisions taken in November were not in the best global interests of the sport of sailing, and succeeded in helping put the issue back on the agenda for the world governing body’s May meetings at the 2008 Olympic sailing host city.
At today’s meeting, the RYA’s representative Chris Atkins was the first to address Council on this subject and spoke strongly in support of the recommendations of ISAF’s expert Events Committee, which backed the inclusion of multihull and women’s high performance dinghy events among the 10 events permitted for the 2012 Games.
Although an initial simple majority vote (20 votes to 17) by the ISAF Council appeared to suggest they were keen to look again at the slate of events for 2012, subsequent votes to overturn the men’s and women’s event decisions did not receive the required two-thirds majority, so the events will remain as per the original ISAF vote in November, namely:
Men
Windsurfer
One person dinghy
Two person dinghy
Two person high performance dinghy
Keelboat
One person dinghy heavy
Women
Windsurfer
One person dinghy
Two person dinghy
Keelboat (Match Racing)
With the events unchanged ISAF appears keen to move the discussion on, and the spotlight for their annual conference in November will now be on which equipment will be used for each of these ten events at the Olympic regatta in Weymouth and Portland in four years’ time.
