SailJuice Blog

One of the strange things about the ISAF decision was the election of an event – Women’s Match Racing - which is only partially thought through in terms of the logistical implications. This is something we’ll have to find out more about in the coming year. I wrote to Liz Baylis, who heads the Women’s International Match Racing Association, and this is what she had to say:

“Hi, Andy,

Thanks for your note.

WIMRA is extremely excited with ISAF’s decision to include women’s keelboat match racing as one of the ten events for the 2012 Olympic Games.

There are a number of questions that need to be addressed regarding how match racing will fit into the existing Olympic structure and we are currently working with ISAF to develop a plan to help the ISAF Council to answer them.  The ISAF Council will make the final decisions based on recommendations from its committees, from the sailors, the event organizers, the Member National Authorities and WIMRA.

The only decision that Council has made so far is that the boats for the Olympic Games will be supplied.

The further issues of format, inclusion in the Grade 1 OCR events, the qualifying system, the boats to be used, the number of crew per boat, the number of teams to sail in this event in the Olympics, etc. will all be decided in 2008. As much as we would like to be able to give those answers now, we are really unable to do so. To attempt to speculate on what the answers might be would be unfair to those who are giving input to the ISAF Council and who have good ideas that need to be considered before the ultimate decisions are made.

We hope you understand our situation. It is pretty much the same with all the events selected. We are looking forward to doing what we can to make the women’s keelboat match racing event a successful event in 2012.

As more information becomes available, we will do our best to share it.

Cheers,

Liz”

One thing that Women’s Match Racing has in its favour is there is already a groundswell of interest and support for the Event, whereas the Yngling never had that. It was dragged into the Games to take on a role which it could never live up to. Now the challenge for Match Racing is to see if it can do that in a coherent and consistent way with the rest of the Olympic circuit.