Rant

As I've said I am totally in disbelief at the recent ISAF move to discard the multihull from the Olympic Games.

Here's my recent rant on the subject from crew.org.nz:

In answer to criticism of the age of the Tornado design:

First find a better boat. The Multihull Trials couldn't. The other designs were all newer but in terms of sheer refinement and reliability, not to mention speed, all fell short. No surprise there given the investment over many years on improving the Tornado while staying true to the basic form .

Look also at international fleet spread and the durability of the universally accepted manufacturers product - Marstrom - where the quality is so good now that some boats last more than one Olympic cycle.

So you could not find a better boat that ticks all those boxes. Why on earth would you start from scratch anyway? I am sure that you could design and build a much faster boat within the same or more economical parameters. But could you get the same sort of performance gain the 49er achieved over the FD? And is it even necessary? So I believe the Tornado could remain as a great representative in the Multihull slot.

But I'm gutted about the loss of the Multihull berth for several other reasons:

(next rant starts here.....).

One is that like the Americas Cup, the TP52's and the VO70's constant investment leads to refinement and an eventual trickle down of technology that benefits us all. Such as Tornado refinements and techniques like wild thing, mild thing, batten technology, some of the Marstrom construction and fitting innovations, sail design - more recently gennaker design and handling advances etc etc. It's great for our sport.

Next, the Olympic circuit naturally builds a quality of sailors that exceeds the standards in most if not all other classes. Just look at the results of the A Cat worlds after 2 races and count the number of current or past T sailors who have jumped in - some just for this regatta - and are immediately in the top 15 or so). So in order to succeed you have to beat, and be, the best. That's fairly worthy.

Not all developments work out well. I personally believe the carbon mast was unnecessary in the context of maintaining class strength and a mistake for the class in terms of the decision and/or its implementation. Of course there are performance gains for the boat but I question whether they were needed. Regardless the single manufacturer concept and the resulting 4,500 Euro plus freight/tax etc cost (which can't really be short-cut) created a division and killed the depth of the class overnight in NZ and no doubt in other countries. And I think that gives a pretty good pointer to what might happen if a brand new cat class was introduced.

I do care about TV coverage and it pisses me off that the last couple of Olympic Regattas have been totally awful in that regard.

But my main point is that we as multihull sailors and aspiring athletes - and I use that term in the very broadest sense of the word (maybe I should say sportspeople instead!) - who aim to compete and succeed at the very top level were privileged to have the Olympic Gold as that goal. Even in these dark days of drug taking in many sports, for sailors it doesn't come any better than that. How on earth can anyone feel good about that opportunity being taken away from such a major arm of our sport - even if they themselves didn't aspire to pursue it!

Rant over!