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World Sailing Windsurfing equipment 2024 Olympics Survey

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Created by Sterlings > 9 months ago, 24 Jul 2019
Subsonic
WA, 2963 posts
19 Aug 2019 10:11PM
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Chris 249 said..



sailquik said..




cammd said..
Whats the point of a one design board for windfoil1.







Thats exactly what I am wondering!

My understanding is that the board is the least influential part of a foiling setup.

And what exactly does this gobbeldygook mean: 'Open Registered Series Production scheme rest of equipment'





Isn't it going to be like Raceboards etc, where the manufacturers have to have made (or agree to make) a certain minimum number of sets of production equipment, and then get to register it so that people can use it in races?

The sad thing is that a sport that claims to pride itself on innovation will not allow backyard inventors to race. Ironically, the very first Windsurfer, Mike Waltze's incredibly influential first sinker, the first shortboards etc would all be banned under the current rules.




I know where you're both coming from, but going against my development class roots i say; would you rather the races were run in the fashion of the original 18 footer rules?

"Boards shall be 2m long and the race starts at 1."

Chris 249
NSW, 3215 posts
20 Aug 2019 10:22AM
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Subsonic said..


Chris 249 said..





sailquik said..






cammd said..
Whats the point of a one design board for windfoil1.









Thats exactly what I am wondering!

My understanding is that the board is the least influential part of a foiling setup.

And what exactly does this gobbeldygook mean: 'Open Registered Series Production scheme rest of equipment'







Isn't it going to be like Raceboards etc, where the manufacturers have to have made (or agree to make) a certain minimum number of sets of production equipment, and then get to register it so that people can use it in races?

The sad thing is that a sport that claims to pride itself on innovation will not allow backyard inventors to race. Ironically, the very first Windsurfer, Mike Waltze's incredibly influential first sinker, the first shortboards etc would all be banned under the current rules.






I know where you're both coming from, but going against my development class roots i say; would you rather the races were run in the fashion of the original 18 footer rules?

"Boards shall be 2m long and the race starts at 1."



I think history shows us that if the rule is too open, gear will become too expensive - it's happened time and time again as we both know. Even the 18 Footers actually introduced restrictions to ban lighter, narrower and faster boats as early as 1908.

But the current rules are very restrictive and basically stop anyone from smaller countries building a new Raceboard, for example, as there is little or no chance of building enough boards to qualify if you only have a small population. There also seems to be nothing that would stop a rich Olympic team like the Brits doing something similar to what they did with their Olympic bikes - making "production" bikes that are given to the team and will only be for sale hypothetically, at an unknown future date and for around $100,000.

It's a damn pity there isn't some way to play with custom boards; personally I'd wonder if you couldn't allow them to race but restrict them to smaller sails, lower-tech construction, or make them a bit heavier in order to ensure that they can't beat the production boards.

cammd
QLD, 3467 posts
20 Aug 2019 1:42PM
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Chris 249 said..



cammd said..





Chris249 said..









jusavina said..


Fixed it for you:

That race every four years LOL
maybe you should ask some members of the RQYS Australian Sailing why they dont send windsurfers but they bend the rules for others .











You're right to defend the RQYS, which has done plenty for windsurfing, but who have AS bent the rules for recently?

The people who missed out worst in recent games was the 49erFX team, as far as I know, but were any rules broken?

Given how little windsurfing and windsurfer racing is going on in Oz it's understandable that more popular disciplines could be favoured, but has that actually happened?











I think windsurfing would be more popular or even one of the most popular if the equivalent resources to other Olympic classes were allocated over say a 5 or 10 year plan (2 Olympic cycles). The uptake of juniors after only 2 seasons of having one dedicated Australian Sailing windsurfing coach was pretty promising and a number of clubs began racing techno and we had over 20 at a youth nationals, higher numbers than other classes that are better resourced.

Lasers or 470 or 29/49ners for example have AS coaches in every state and programs embedded in clubs and pathways well established and resourced. A few more years of even one dedicated windsurfing coach and the numbers would have swelled, they were swelling, unfortunately AS didn't send a rep to Rio even though we qualified and deserved to go and then they cut funding to the coach.

Now we are back to clubs funding and running programs on their own and that's largely done via volunteers. Really what was AS thinking, did they expect one coach could take Australian Windsurfing from nothing to Gold medals in half of one Olympic cycle.

Windsurfing is the second biggest youth class worldwide, popularity with the class is not what is holding it back in Australia. We have some pretty talented youth at the moment, potential elite level, put the same resources into them that are put into other classes and I would not be surprised if they achieved similar or better results, and those guys are only coming from a pool of 20 or 30 sailors, imagine if we had hundreds sailing windsurfer's, Australia would be up the top of the sport in the Olympics.






What resources are given to the dinghy clubs that produce such huge numbers of sailors? My old club in Sydney was one of the biggest dinghy clubs around and we never saw any "resources" from AS; in fact I have never been at a single club that had any "resources". They all bred their own talent or attracted it from other clubs on the basis of the club's strength.

The dinghies have good pathways and fleets largely because dinghy sailors have been working their butts off as volunteers for decades to build junior sailing, and also because they have a cheap, simple OD class that both adults and juniors can sail. The dinghy clubs built their grass roots fleets and we haven't; that's not AS's fault.

The Lasers may have AS coaches, but at least when I was seriously in them the AS coaches were NOT allowed to coach male Radial sailors - and yet there were plenty of them. The Laser Radial gets big fleets every year so they deserve coaching. When even the Laser 4.7s, which aren't eligible for the Youth Worlds, can get twelve times as many entrants as the windsurfers to the Youth Nats it's not surprising that they get rewarded with good pathways and coaching.

I'm not at all sure that the Techno is actually the second biggest class - it seems to be far smaller than the Opti, Laser and Radial and probably smaller than the 420 and maybe 29er. That is not to knock the Techno, because the problem may be the lack of support from windsurfers. Okay, RQ does a good job and so do some other pockets - but that does not mean that the rest of the windsurfing world in Australia does a good job.

Even the fact that RQ started as a dinghy club, became a yacht club and is now adopting windsurfing is an example of the issue. When have windsurfers ever formed a physical club in Australia? Lots of dinghy clubs have built their own premises and run their own weekly races - why should they be expected to support a different discipline? If we want our discipline to grow, shouldn't we grow it like they grew theirs? Sure, it's harder to get a clubhouse these days, but we still don't tend to put in the same amount of work to develop our own fleets clubs, and therefore arguably we shouldn't expect the same support.

I'm not aware of whether we qualified to go to Rio in all respects, but years ago we didn't even send the 470s at one stage - now we have won a bunch of gold in that class. The 470 experience proves that a class can recover even if it isn't sent to the Games, if it gets enough support from other people in the same discipline.




We did qualify the country for Rio, if you want to argue whether we met AS standards or Olympic standards that is another issue but the country was qualified to send a Rep.

Techno is 10000 strong with active sailors with worlds recieving 300-400 entries so again arguing details is really missing the point, popularity with the class is not the issue, its very popular with youth worldwide, the fact that its not in Australia indicates something else is at play.

As windsurfers we are not asking for or expecting the same support as all the other classes however as members of Australian Sailing, we "arguably" have a right to ask for and we deserve to recieve some support to develop and grow our classes and support our Olympic hopeful's

We had a AS funded national coach and a bunch of volunteers in numerous clubs working to build numbers in the youth, those numbers were building and the techno class was looking very promising in terms of participation and quality of the sailors . We still have those volunteers and they will continue to put in the effort but AS cut the funding to the one coach we had.

I wonder if AS was to cut all support to a class like 420/470 how would it go, do you think it would thrive or do you think it might suffer a bit despite all the volunteers and club support.

Anyway the point is youth windsurfing was on a upward trajectory and AS should have kept the support going at least for one Olympic cycle before throwing in the towel.

AUS 814
NSW, 452 posts
20 Aug 2019 3:13PM
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Just checking but did we actually secure a spot at Rio for the RSX men and women. I thought you had to finish above a certain place in the World sailing combined world champs and then look at sailing in other events that may also lead to qualification for the Country to be allocated a spot

Sterlings
QLD, 73 posts
20 Aug 2019 3:30PM
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Jo Sterling qualified Australia for a spot at the RIO Olympics at the RSX Worlds in Oman in 2015. There were no men campaigning. SA decided not to send Jo in May 2016 as well as the 49erFX. At the time Jo was ranked 11th in the world. She had achieved many top 15/top 20 results in large fleets in Europe. Instead Turkey got the spot and they were ranked about 60th in world. SA's reason to us was that they wanted 'multiple top 10 finishes' although the qualification document did not quantify this and they could send an athlete discretionarily. Automatic selection to go is a top 5 world finish or thereabouts. What was irksome was that a couple of other athletes were sent discretionarily with more or less similar results.
There was some politics around the 49er fx non-selection and one rumour was that Jo was a casualty of this process. The 49er fx's appealed and lost. We didn't appeal for a few reasons.

Jo went back to study - Masters of Sports Psychology now (has real life experience for sure). SA talked with her about campaigning again . But as you can perhaps understand - another 4 years without any income ( an lots of outcome from the bank of mum and dad) for perhaps another dubious decision was not that attractive to her.
They then did not continue with a windsurfing coach.

btw we first funded Max personally (together with a USA sailor) to come to Australia in around 2013. Jo got some good results in Europe (14th in the Europeans if I recall) and SA then funded him on a regatta to regatta basis until the put him on a contact. We funded Max ourselves for awhile, as the Jo was getting very little coaching from AS - a couple of camps a year as part of the youth team or from a boat sailor who didn't really know the RSX.


AUS 814
NSW, 452 posts
20 Aug 2019 3:40PM
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Sterlings said..
Jo Sterling qualified Australia for a spot at the RIO Olympics at the RSX Worlds in Oman in 2015. There were no men campaigning. SA decided not to send Jo in May 2016 as well as the 49erFX. At the time Jo was ranked 11th in the world. She had achieved many top 15/top 20 results in large fleets in Europe. Instead Turkey got the spot and they were ranked about 60th in world. SA's reason to us was that they wanted 'multiple top 10 finishes' although the qualification document did not quantify this and they could send an athlete discretionarily. Automatic selection to go is a top 5 world finish or thereabouts. What was irksome was that a couple of other athletes were sent discretionarily with more or less similar results.
There was some politics around the 49er fx non-selection and one rumour was that Jo was a casualty of this process. The 49er fx's appealed and lost. We didn't appeal for a few reasons.

Jo went back to study - Masters of Sports Psychology now (has real life experience for sure). SA talked with her about campaigning again . But as you can perhaps understand - another 4 years without any income ( an lots of outcome from the bank of mum and dad) for perhaps another dubious decision was not that attractive to her.
They then did not continue with a windsurfing coach.

btw we first funded Max personally (together with a USA sailor) to come to Australia in around 2013. Jo got some good results in Europe (14th in the Europeans if I recall) and SA then funded him on a regatta to regatta basis until the put him on a contact. We funded Max ourselves for awhile, as the Jo was getting very little coaching from AS - a couple of camps a year as part of the youth team or from a boat sailor who didn't really know the RSX.




I think if you can get to 11th in the World you should deserve to go, not great by SA but then they did vote on removing the Finn and bringing in the 2 person offshore keel boat

Chris 249
NSW, 3215 posts
20 Aug 2019 5:47PM
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Sterlings said..
Jo Sterling qualified Australia for a spot at the RIO Olympics at the RSX Worlds in Oman in 2015. There were no men campaigning. SA decided not to send Jo in May 2016 as well as the 49erFX. At the time Jo was ranked 11th in the world. She had achieved many top 15/top 20 results in large fleets in Europe. Instead Turkey got the spot and they were ranked about 60th in world. SA's reason to us was that they wanted 'multiple top 10 finishes' although the qualification document did not quantify this and they could send an athlete discretionarily. Automatic selection to go is a top 5 world finish or thereabouts. What was irksome was that a couple of other athletes were sent discretionarily with more or less similar results.
There was some politics around the 49er fx non-selection and one rumour was that Jo was a casualty of this process. The 49er fx's appealed and lost. We didn't appeal for a few reasons.

Jo went back to study - Masters of Sports Psychology now (has real life experience for sure). SA talked with her about campaigning again . But as you can perhaps understand - another 4 years without any income ( an lots of outcome from the bank of mum and dad) for perhaps another dubious decision was not that attractive to her.
They then did not continue with a windsurfing coach.

btw we first funded Max personally (together with a USA sailor) to come to Australia in around 2013. Jo got some good results in Europe (14th in the Europeans if I recall) and SA then funded him on a regatta to regatta basis until the put him on a contact. We funded Max ourselves for awhile, as the Jo was getting very little coaching from AS - a couple of camps a year as part of the youth team or from a boat sailor who didn't really know the RSX.






That was a great effort, and I think that AS should have sent Jo as Tessa and Caitlin in the 49erFX. I think Tim and Luke qualified the RSX men for London but didn't get sent either.

I can't remember who was sent with discretion, but the point was that in earlier years dinghy sailors have qualified and not been sent so it may not be that windsurfers are getting a raw deal.

windsufering
VIC, 1124 posts
20 Aug 2019 5:58PM
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The fx 49er Olympic spot was chosen 4 years out hence the treatment of certain sailors

Chris 249
NSW, 3215 posts
20 Aug 2019 6:27PM
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Select to expand quote
cammd said..

Chris 249 said..




cammd said..






Chris249 said..










jusavina said..


Fixed it for you:

That race every four years LOL
maybe you should ask some members of the RQYS Australian Sailing why they dont send windsurfers but they bend the rules for others .












You're right to defend the RQYS, which has done plenty for windsurfing, but who have AS bent the rules for recently?

The people who missed out worst in recent games was the 49erFX team, as far as I know, but were any rules broken?

Given how little windsurfing and windsurfer racing is going on in Oz it's understandable that more popular disciplines could be favoured, but has that actually happened?












I think windsurfing would be more popular or even one of the most popular if the equivalent resources to other Olympic classes were allocated over say a 5 or 10 year plan (2 Olympic cycles). The uptake of juniors after only 2 seasons of having one dedicated Australian Sailing windsurfing coach was pretty promising and a number of clubs began racing techno and we had over 20 at a youth nationals, higher numbers than other classes that are better resourced.

Lasers or 470 or 29/49ners for example have AS coaches in every state and programs embedded in clubs and pathways well established and resourced. A few more years of even one dedicated windsurfing coach and the numbers would have swelled, they were swelling, unfortunately AS didn't send a rep to Rio even though we qualified and deserved to go and then they cut funding to the coach.

Now we are back to clubs funding and running programs on their own and that's largely done via volunteers. Really what was AS thinking, did they expect one coach could take Australian Windsurfing from nothing to Gold medals in half of one Olympic cycle.

Windsurfing is the second biggest youth class worldwide, popularity with the class is not what is holding it back in Australia. We have some pretty talented youth at the moment, potential elite level, put the same resources into them that are put into other classes and I would not be surprised if they achieved similar or better results, and those guys are only coming from a pool of 20 or 30 sailors, imagine if we had hundreds sailing windsurfer's, Australia would be up the top of the sport in the Olympics.







What resources are given to the dinghy clubs that produce such huge numbers of sailors? My old club in Sydney was one of the biggest dinghy clubs around and we never saw any "resources" from AS; in fact I have never been at a single club that had any "resources". They all bred their own talent or attracted it from other clubs on the basis of the club's strength.

The dinghies have good pathways and fleets largely because dinghy sailors have been working their butts off as volunteers for decades to build junior sailing, and also because they have a cheap, simple OD class that both adults and juniors can sail. The dinghy clubs built their grass roots fleets and we haven't; that's not AS's fault.

The Lasers may have AS coaches, but at least when I was seriously in them the AS coaches were NOT allowed to coach male Radial sailors - and yet there were plenty of them. The Laser Radial gets big fleets every year so they deserve coaching. When even the Laser 4.7s, which aren't eligible for the Youth Worlds, can get twelve times as many entrants as the windsurfers to the Youth Nats it's not surprising that they get rewarded with good pathways and coaching.

I'm not at all sure that the Techno is actually the second biggest class - it seems to be far smaller than the Opti, Laser and Radial and probably smaller than the 420 and maybe 29er. That is not to knock the Techno, because the problem may be the lack of support from windsurfers. Okay, RQ does a good job and so do some other pockets - but that does not mean that the rest of the windsurfing world in Australia does a good job.

Even the fact that RQ started as a dinghy club, became a yacht club and is now adopting windsurfing is an example of the issue. When have windsurfers ever formed a physical club in Australia? Lots of dinghy clubs have built their own premises and run their own weekly races - why should they be expected to support a different discipline? If we want our discipline to grow, shouldn't we grow it like they grew theirs? Sure, it's harder to get a clubhouse these days, but we still don't tend to put in the same amount of work to develop our own fleets clubs, and therefore arguably we shouldn't expect the same support.

I'm not aware of whether we qualified to go to Rio in all respects, but years ago we didn't even send the 470s at one stage - now we have won a bunch of gold in that class. The 470 experience proves that a class can recover even if it isn't sent to the Games, if it gets enough support from other people in the same discipline.





We did qualify the country for Rio, if you want to argue whether we met AS standards or Olympic standards that is another issue but the country was qualified to send a Rep.

Techno is 10000 strong with active sailors with worlds recieving 300-400 entries so again arguing details is really missing the point, popularity with the class is not the issue, its very popular with youth worldwide, the fact that its not in Australia indicates something else is at play.

As windsurfers we are not asking for or expecting the same support as all the other classes however as members of Australian Sailing, we "arguably" have a right to ask for and we deserve to recieve some support to develop and grow our classes and support our Olympic hopeful's

We had a AS funded national coach and a bunch of volunteers in numerous clubs working to build numbers in the youth, those numbers were building and the techno class was looking very promising in terms of participation and quality of the sailors . We still have those volunteers and they will continue to put in the effort but AS cut the funding to the one coach we had.

I wonder if AS was to cut all support to a class like 420/470 how would it go, do you think it would thrive or do you think it might suffer a bit despite all the volunteers and club support.

Anyway the point is youth windsurfing was on a upward trajectory and AS should have kept the support going at least for one Olympic cycle before throwing in the towel.


It's not a "detail" to point out that windsurfer racing is much smaller than dinghy racing. We have one strong junior/youth class - the dinghy sailors have heaps of them. The support we get may be greater in proportion to our numbers than the support the dinghy sailors get. Our potential to grow the sport may be much bigger than we assume.

AS DID cut pretty much all support for the 470 years ago, and didn't send the team that qualified. The class bounced back.
Similarly, there are dinghy classes that get little or no support, and sometimes have to battle a class that does get AS support, that still get much bigger fleets than windsurfers do. You don't need AS support to grow a strong class.

Nothing I said has been critical of RQ or the people who have promoted the Techno or other junior windsurfer classes - the point is that we need more people doing the same sort of thing so that we can build grass-roots junior windsurfing in Australia up to the same position that dinghy classes are here, and the same position that junior windsurfing is in Europe. Until we do that, we probably can't blame AS for not treating windsurfing as well as they treat the dinghy sailors, who put in such a massive amount of work developing huge junior fleets.

windsufering
VIC, 1124 posts
20 Aug 2019 6:32PM
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Does the bic techno class have a association

Sterlings
QLD, 73 posts
20 Aug 2019 7:02PM
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windsufering said..
The fx 49er Olympic spot was chosen 4 years out hence the treatment of certain sailors


Yes this is what we heard also. The didn't want to send Tess and her crew. Jo had similar results and so they couldn't send her then also. If they had, Tess would have won her appeal.

The way AS told Jo of her non-selection was also choice - an email in the boarding lounge in Nice on the way back to Australia, after her final regatta - the Hyeres World Cup. They said that they tried to call her but couldn't get onto her - cowards. I had a distressed daughter travelling by herself all the way home from Europe. They also said we had 48 hours to appeal - 24 of those hours she was in the air. Was a very stressful time all round and TBH due to all this, they have lost her to the sport. She tells me that her whole time with AS, she was made to feel like a failure.

Chris 249
NSW, 3215 posts
20 Aug 2019 8:45PM
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Sterlings said..


windsufering said..
The fx 49er Olympic spot was chosen 4 years out hence the treatment of certain sailors




Yes this is what we heard also. The didn't want to send Tess and her crew. Jo had similar results and so they couldn't send her then also. If they had, Tess would have won her appeal.

The way AS told Jo of her non-selection was also choice - an email in the boarding lounge in Nice on the way back to Australia, after her final regatta - the Hyeres World Cup. They said that they tried to call her but couldn't get onto her - cowards. I had a distressed daughter travelling by herself all the way home from Europe. They also said we had 48 hours to appeal - 24 of those hours she was in the air. Was a very stressful time all round and TBH due to all this, they have lost her to the sport. She tells me that her whole time with AS, she was made to feel like a failure.



Wow, that's shocking.

It's not even just people like Jo who have been made to feel a failure - some of those who have made the Games selection seem to be pretty down on the whole experience.

sailquik
VIC, 6068 posts
20 Aug 2019 9:58PM
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Another very good reason why you may not really want your sailing class or sport to become an Olympic class or sport. .

RichardG
WA, 3743 posts
29 Aug 2019 2:39PM
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What happened to the LT bid ? I think either the Glide or a foil would win ultimate selection, but what were the reasons for the decision to exclude LT from further trials ?

windsufering
VIC, 1124 posts
29 Aug 2019 6:23PM
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They had already had a World championships in Garda no need for testing

Chris 249
NSW, 3215 posts
29 Aug 2019 9:57PM
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I can see why the LT wouldn't get invited to the trials - it's just too far off centre. The sailing media and quite a few sailors have a fixation that high speed is the future of the sport, and they'd pillory WS if it went for the LT. I often defend WS, but for a bunch of smart people they have a weird tendency to go on wild leaps when they make predictions; read the report of the last trials, the one that chose the RSX, and you can see that NONE of their confident predictions about the impact of the hybrids came true. They just operate in an evidence-free zone.

I'm pretty happy that the actual sailors gave the LT the third placing out of fifth, up against two much more hyped competitors.

windsufering
VIC, 1124 posts
1 Sep 2019 3:54PM
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The funny thing is, all those classes chosen for testing need the Olympics for survivall !



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"World Sailing Windsurfing equipment 2024 Olympics Survey" started by Sterlings