Olympians are different from you and me. In the final analysis, that’s what being Olympian is all about. For whether we like it or not, the vivid clarity of an Olympic medal is one of the few ways that sailing can gain a place centre stage in any national attention. Even then, it’s a place in the spotlight that’s held only briefly. Yet while some nations’ need for having sailing in the public eye is even more dependent on the Olympics than that of many others, the fact is that, in their shared search for universal publicity and worldwide acceptance, sailing generally is much more dependent on the Olympics than the Olympics are on sailing.
To the winner, the glory. Ireland's Annalise Murphy returns to Dun Laoghaire and national fame in 2016 with her Olympic Silver Medal won at Rio de Janeiro
Thus in creating “Olympic-friendly” classes, we find ourselves on a course that leads to facing the reality that – except for the outstanding exception of the ILCA/Lasers – being involved with the Olympics is not good for a boat class. Since being ejected from the Olympic lineup, both the International Dragon and more recently the Olympic Finn have been thriving, each in their own merry way. By contrast, the Olympics-aimed Nacra 17 catamaran – while a very commendable ideal - falls somewhat short of being a sailing household name, and is not a feature of the average or even elite sailing club dinghy park.
The People’s Boat. The ILCA 7 has Ireland’s Finn Lynch (National YC) lined up for a place in the 2024 Paris/Marseille Sailing Olympiad, while Eve McMahon (Howth YC) will be racing the ILCA 6. The universally popular ILCA has become accustomed to major international events seeing the host country provide all the boats, and World Sailing hopes to see this policy extended to every Olympic sailing class by 2032
WORLD SAILING’S VIEW FOR 2032
Thus the divide between everyday sailing and Olympic expectations is now more than a divide – it’s a chasm. And if World Sailing’s recently published vision for the global development of our sport is fully implemented by its target time of the 2032 Games in Brisbane - a sea-based location which will lend itself particularly well to this ambition - the image of our sport as hoped for by the global authority will become this:
- Sailing is widely recognised in the Olympic Movement for its pioneering work to make the sport at the Games more sustainable and accessible.
- Sailors compete using supplied equipment, manufactured using higher than current standards of sustainability.
- Sailors and teams use their platforms to advocate for action on climate change.
REMOTE FROM THE REALITY OF EVERYDAY SAILING
In other words, not only are top national awards in sailing already Olympic-dominated, but the demands of the Olympic Movement are becoming such that they seem to aspire towards an image and actuality of sailing that is remote from the reality as experienced by ordinary sailing enthusiasts.
Of course, it can be re-asserted that the very definition of “Olympian” in its broadest sense is that it is something happening at remote heights of excellence that are stratospheric in their relation to everyday ground-level sport. But nevertheless the point about many other Olympic sports is that they are a supreme version which is nevertheless easily - and obviously - directly related to the same sport as enjoyed by less gifted participants in an often unglamorous setting.
Annalise Murphy with her 2016 Medal. Ordinary sailors could identify closely with her achievements, for after the Rio Olympics, she ensured that the ILCA she had been allocated in Brazil was brought home permanently to Ireland for display in the Lexicon in Dun Laoghaire
In this “lower” level of sailing, the personal pleasure of these “ordinary” folk – people like us - is going afloat in usually privately-owned boats, enjoying hugely varied craft whose functions range from the determinedly non-racing right up to the highest levels of Corinthian competition, with a central core to their enjoyment being the fact that it is a fascinating vehicle sport, with all the personal boat maintenance and tuning which that involves, a scenario which ensures that they see their boats as much more than “sports equipment”.
PLEASE DON’T MENTION “VEHICLE SPORT”….
This is something which World Sailing prefers not to acknowledge, at least as far as the Olympics are concerned. The document from WS was released a month ago, but perhaps it’s a comment on its immediate relevance that other things have since dominated our attention here, even though we had quickly noticed some remarkable oddities in it. Yet even after further digestion, those oddities are still there, on a different planet as it makes clear in its introductory statement to this document. Download the full pdf here.
STRENGTHENING SAILING’S OLYMPIC POSITION
The background to the new document reads thus:
World Sailing has published its Olympic Vision strategy which is aimed at strengthening the sport's contribution to the Olympic Movement.
Produced with the support of global consulting firm McKinsey & Company and following extensive consultation with Member National Authorities (MNAs), World Sailing classes, the World Sailing Board and Council, and athlete representatives, the Olympic Vision document addresses sailing's place in the Olympic Movement.
Quanhai Li, World Sailing President (from China, he was elected for a four year term on November 2nd 2023-Ed), said: "World Sailing's Olympic Vision provides clear guidance for all Olympic classes and MNAs, and for World Sailing decision-making, with the aim of ensuring sailing programs, events and development initiatives align with the IOC's objectives for the Olympic Movement.
Chinese sailing’s Quanhia Li, World Sailing President for four years from November 2023. Photo WS
"Through this document, we have the opportunity to re-centre our focus for Olympic sailing on the areas of greatest importance with a clear goal in mind. This will help the class associations and MNAs to prioritise specific areas, work towards the targets and incorporate the guidance into their own strategies over the next eight years and beyond."
David Graham, World Sailing CEO, added, "World Sailing highly values our place in the Olympic Movement and the opportunity it gives us to contribute to the wider family of sports.
"The goal of the Olympic Vision document is to provide a clear direction which will enable MNAs, classes and others to work together for the benefit of the sport as a whole. I would like to thank our stakeholders for helping to shape the strategy and the World Sailing Council for their strong support in approving the document.
"World Sailing is committed to providing the best sailing program possible and to playing our part in strengthening the Olympic Movement."
At first glance, these are commendable aspirations and commitments, even if they have a whiff of the global virtue-signalling tendency, which may already be past its peak in other areas. But when we delve into the document’s details as produced by McKinsey in the popular all-singing, all-dancing, multi-coloured modern graphic style, we find some interpretations of the history of Olympic sailing which are so narrowly focused that it makes you wonder if we should treat its policy statements as similarly selective.
DIFFERING HISTORIC VIEWS OF OLYMPIC SAILING
Assuming that you don’t have the time and energy to delve through this seemingly-impressive display, we find for you the following brief paragraph from World Sailing working with McKinsey on the history of Olympic sailing:
“Sailing has been part of every Olympics Games since 1908 when the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, on the Isle of Wight, and the Clyde Corinthian Yacht Club, on the Cowal Peninsula in the Scottish Highlands, provided the venues. Only five countries entered, and Great Britain won all four gold medals contested. Sailing and the Olympic Games have both changed dramatically since then. The Tokyo 2020 regatta saw 65 national flags flying. Over the last three Olympics, an average of 16 different nations have been represented on the podium across 10 events.”
France’s Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) was the moving spirit in the re-birth of the Olympics, and was President of the International Olympic Committee from 1896 to 1925. Sailing was included as an Olympic sport from the revival of the Olympic Games at Athens in 1896, though it was not provided for in the 1904 Games at St Louis in the US.
The initial statement in this paragraph is accurate but less than complete if you’re a real Olympic sailing anorak. We can only think of an explanation in the fact that World Sailing is London-based and so too presumably are their consultants McKinsey, for there’s something of a London-centric flavour to the document. The reality is that when Baron de Coubertin’s ideal of a modern revival of the Olympics reached fruition at Athens in 1896 a good twelve years before the first British-staged sailing Olympiad, a fleet was assembled in Athens for Olympic sailing races, but the severe winds of a persistent meltemi made any sport afloat impossible for the duration.
WAS THIS WHERE OLYMPIC DISCOMFORT WITH SAILING BEGAN?
This may well have planted the seeds of sailing’s sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the Olympic movement. Be that as it may, by the next Games four years later at Paris in 1900, sailing was involved, albeit at locations away from the main stadium events in Paris, and at different times.
At Meulan on the River Seine from 20th-29th May, there were the inshore sailing events involving 55 boats, while the “offshore” events were off Le Havre from 1st to 5th August. One of the top boats was the gaff cutter Lerina, with a first women’s sailing Gold Medal for Helene de Pourtales of Switzerland.
She was originally of the American railroad billionaire Barbey family, so we’re into Henry James and Edith Wharton territory here, possibly spiced with a touch of Oscar Wilde, and linked in with the history of the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. It’s a line which has not, so far as we know, ever been sung about by Willie Nelson, but it was real enough to make a lot of money nevertheless.
FIRST OLYMPIC FEMALE SAILING GOLD MEDALLIST COULD BE CLAIMED AS AMERICAN
The fact that one of the first female sailing Olympic Gold Medallists could be equally claimed as an American might help the current moves to refresh enthusiasm for Olympic sailing in the US, particularly as the nationally authoritative Cruising Club of America has taken to highlighting the fact that of the two boats finishing in the initial Bermuda Race from New York in 1906, one had a female co-skipper – aged only 20 – in Thora Lund Robinson aboard the Gauntlet.
1900 Olympic Gold Medalling gaff cutter Lerina – one hot little boat, and not for racing by the faint-hearted
While any seasoned observer could see that Lerina was one hot little boat, unfortunately the only photo of the first woman sailing gold medallist that has come down to us through the ages is a rather stately and stiff portrait of Helene de Pourtales in all her formal glory. So we much prefer to think of her as being more akin to that much-liked Julius Price illustration of an Edwardian female helmsperson. It used to be hidden away in the billiards room of the more august yacht clubs, but happily has now been brought centre-stage for display in the dining rooms to general admiration.
When dressed in her aristocratic finery, Helene de Pourtales (nee Barbey, but without Ken) was an unlikely-looking Olympic Sailing Gold Medallist, but in action afloat she probably looked more like the famous Julius Price painting below………..
It’s not until the 1908 Olympics in Britain that the World Sailing Document gets on track. With the British yachting establishment taking charge of the sailing side for the 1908 games, it’s not surprising that there may have been an immediate bit of re-writing of history to suit the new scenario. This was to happen again in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II, when some of the very good pre-war but distinctly European and even German classes were dumped in favour of using new British designs such as the Firefly dinghy for single-handing, and the Swallow (in which our own O’Brien Kennedy had more than a hand in the design input) as the two-hander.
The International Dragon’s obvious pre-eminence as the three-man boat was offset by the British Olympic Council insisting that the selected UK helm, Eric Strain of Royal North of Ireland YC, should discard his much-loved winning boat, the Scandinavian-built Ceres, in favour of the new but heavier and slower British-built Ceres II, thereby condemning him to fourth place when – as 1947 Dragon Gold Cup winner with Ceres I – he would have been in line for at least a Silver had he been left with the boat he preferred.
Be that as it may, forty years earlier in 1908 the sailing Olympics – the first staged in an English-speaking country - certainly received more attention than before, and were firmly set into the programme thereafter, then onto a path which has inevitably led to the Olympian peaks of sailing diverging more and more from the sport at its more ordinary level.
In such circumstances, it is actually realistic for World Sailing to believe that by 2032, it will have turned sailing and its “equipment” into an ecologically acceptable activity, a world away from everyday club life. The only trouble is that in the final analysis, it’s not about equipment – it’s about people. In order to produce a high-performance stream to feed the ferocious personnel appetites of the Olympic monster, the national sailing authorities have to identify talent from the earliest possible age, and then divert it ever more tightly into their almost monastic High Performance Academies.
The contemporary sailing scene in Brisbane. Some very seasoned Irish sailors will be delighted to see that they’re still using the veteran Heron Class sailing dinghy, but in 2032 the Olympic sailing plan will see the introduction of a much less homely but more ecologically-friendly version of our sport. Photo South Brisbane SC
PIED PIPER OF OLYMPIC SAILING?
This can disrupt lives and damage families, and is something of which we have to be aware. In fact, it’s an almost contradictory proposition to be creating an ecologically-positive high-profile sector in our sport at Brisbane 2032 if those performing in the heart of it have a dysfunctional relationship with the mainstream.
As for being a parent, well, as one father has observed, it can be like having the Pied Piper that is Olympic Sailing coming along the waterfront, spiriting all the best young local sailors away forever. That’s as may be, but we surely have to face the reality that “ordinary” sailing and Olympic sailing should be two completely different categories when it comes to allocating national awards.
