There will be no multihull in the Weymouth 2012 Olympics. But there will be Women’s Match Racing in place of the Women’s Fleet Racing.
Following a tense ISAF Council meeting in Estoril this morning, ISAF will need to batten down the hatches in preparation for a Tornado of protest from the multihull world, as the catamaran lost out by two votes. It lost out to the Men’s Keelboat, aka the Star, the class that just refuses to lay down and die.
In the vote for the final women’s class, the votes went 21:20 in favour of Women’s Match Racing, the Women’s High Performance skiff just losing out by the skinniest of margins.
Once again, after a promising discussion and series of votes by the Events Committee two days ago, ISAF Council goes its own way. The wrong way.
But more of that later, I’ve got a plane to catch. In the mean time, I don’t doubt you’ll let me know how you feel about ISAF’s choices in the Comments section below…
If you’re interested, here is the breakdown of the votes as listed by ISAF. In total there were 36 ballot papers (two Council members did not vote after declaring a conflict of interest, and the President saved his vote in the case of a tie).
The results of the vote were:
Men – top six events selected
One person dinghy – Men (36 votes)
Windsurfer – Men (35 votes)
Two person dinghy – Men (34 votes)
Two person dinghy high performance – Men (34 votes)
One person dinghy heavy – Men (33 votes)
Keelboat – Men (23 votes)
Multihull – Men or Open (21 votes)
Women – top four events selected
One person dinghy – Women (35 votes)
Windsurfer – Women (34 votes)
Two person dinghy – Women (31 votes)
Keelboat match racing – Women (21 votes)
Two person dinghy high performance – Women (20 votes)
Multihull – Women (3 votes)
The ISAF President said, “Congratulations to the ten events which have been selected. With the introduction of the ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championship and the ISAF Nations Cup we have seen a massive growth in women’s match racing and I am delighted and excited to welcome it on to the Olympic programme. I extend my thanks to the multihull which has been on the Olympic programme from 1976 to 2004 – we are sorry to have to say goodbye to such an old friend.”
