Looking beyond Weymouth

Published today on www.crew.org.nz

There is no doubt that the next Olympic Regatta will be a brilliant success.

Firstly, the Brits (make that the English!) are the top Olympic sailors, perhaps even top Sailing Nation period.

Secondly, the Weymouth sailing venue is in place and, from all accounts, a magnificent facility.

Thirdly, it's a reasonable bet that, for a change, the weather will cooperate.

Beyond Weymouth, looking towards Rio, it's probably a little early to tell. Sailing is a fearfully elite sport (and I mean elite in a social, rather than competitive sense) in that part of the world and, while there are copious wonderful venues, it's hard to predict how it might play out.

The question remains, however, why International Sailing should continue to bother with the Olympics. Certainly it provides the very highest level of competition, but only within a narrow range of classes.

It can by no means be regarded as the exclusive single pinnacle of our sport.

Many classes enjoy Olympic standard competition without all the disadvantages and bullshit which the Olympics imply. Some, such as the International 505s, resisted overtures because they could not see Olympic participation doing anything for their development. To the contrary, it would decimate their corinthian fleets.

Many sports, too, have resisted Olympic involvement - God only knows why golf has succumbed but it is a fair bet that it's more to do with money than the good of the sport. Does anyone really think that Olympic Golf will become the single biggest golfing event?

Now to the big one. I know I've said it before but sailing (unlike golf or rugby 7s) is a bad fit for the Olympic Games.

It is, venue-wise and logisticly, an expensive sport to mount and, in so far as it has virtually no television appeal, it cannot generate the millions in advertising revenue upon which the Five Ringed Circus feeds. The upshot has been continued pressure from the IOC (even with a yachtsman as president) to cut back the scope of olympic sailing.

New Zealand has an illustrious olympic sailing history and I have the utmost respect for our olympic heroes - I know some of them are distressed with my point of view (one eminent olympian, former colleague and friend, won't even answer my emails!).

But it's a point of view which can be heard right across International Sailing. There is recognition, even at the highest levels of the ISAF sailing, of the sorts of problems I've discussed.

We've got time on our side - but we should be starting to look beyond Weymouth and Rio.

Ladies Golf takes the Cake

First published on Crew.org forum 28 August 2008

So long as the dreadful President Emeritus Juan Antonio Samaranch continues to tread it’s corridors, the Olympic movement can be expected to serve up such Leni Reisenthal-ish images as the jack-booted Chinese guards folding the Olympic flag.

But while, in my experience, there has always been a propensity for sporting officials to emulate the habits and behaviour of the late lamented Fuhrer, the latest move by the Ladies Professional Golf Association takes the cake.

While it purports to be an International body, with part of it’s circuit played in Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, the LPGA is essentially a US institution.

But that hardly justifies the recent xenophobic edict from the storm-troopers of the Ladies Committee - that all players must pass an English language test by 2009 and, meanwhile, newcomers need not apply until they can ‘’spikka da inglees’.

The reason given is that players need to effectively tout their sponsors’ products - say stuff like “I owe my hole in one to Pepto-bismol” or, perhaps, “I couldn’t play 18 holes without my Depends!”
Leaving aside the obvious thought that few Americans could pass an English Test anyway, it will be interesting to see the reaction from the European Ladies. As a temporary resident of bilingual Canada, methinks the LPGA is heading for strife and ridicule.

And how long, I wonder, before yachting’s Cat 1 demands, in the interest of effective communication, that “All crew members will be required to pass an English proficiency Test”?