Is the Olympic Sailing medal becoming just a participation trophy? – Matt Sheahan

If a new Olympic Sailing format is needed, how do we make it fair? It surely can’t be TV that calls the shots

What should an Olympic medal represent? Is it still sport’s ultimate accolade? Is it a demonstration that you’re the best in the world and have dedicated your entire life to proving it? Or is it more of a blue Peter badge, a confirmation that you took part in a piece of sporting media entertainment that you should be proud of?

As we head towards the next Olympic Games regatta in San Diego there are a growing number of sailors who are extremely worried that the medals in 2028 will represent more of a memento for turning up rather than a celebration of being the world’s best.

It’s no secret that Olympic Sailing has had the sword of Damocles hanging over it for decades. An expensive, complicated sport that still isn’t as inclusive as the modern age requires has been a hard sell for a long time.

For years the sport has resisted a class cull to rationalise the overall fleet and bring the numbers down to more economically viable proportions. You could argue that it should have led the way and merged the genders for all of the double-handers to keep classes and disciplines while reducing the head count. And though this has happened in the 470s and Nacra cats, the sport has introduced the equivalent of BMX bike and skateboard categories in the foilers, in the hope these more street-style classes will draw in a huge new audience.

I have nothing against foiling boards or kite foils – they’re exciting – but these new classes have not brought spectators and supporters in the kind of numbers that will turn around the economic fortunes of Olympic Sailing. And neither will changing the medal racing format by reducing it to a single, short, winner-take-all final race between the top four.

Apparently, this is what could be on the cards for Los Angeles. I’m told there are plans to reduce the fleet racing stages beforehand to just three days with no reserve or lay days – which surely doesn’t help to even out the spikes in weather and fortune that often influence our sport. And all in the name of creating a greater sense of jeopardy to make our sport more exciting.

Really? More of a lottery by the sounds of it. Imagine if you turned up at your national championships where you’d worked hard at consistently delivering the points during the week only to be told that the points buffer you’d accumulated counted for nothing when it came to a shot at the trophy.

That’s effectively what happened to British iQFoil sailor Emma Wilson, who was 31 points ahead in the games last year. We know how that played out for her… a bronze.

Surely what would help to get sailing back on track would be to take the racing to a venue that has a reputation for breeze on a stretch of water that can cope with a variety of wind directions and that isn’t hopelessly compromised by being too close to the shore where a few thousand people can watch.

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If we’re talking about sailing at the Olympics needing to be a sport that gets talked about and watched on TV for a global audience, a few thousand on the beach isn’t going to move the needle when it comes to balancing the costs of putting it on. It strikes me as odd that at a time when we can film sailing pretty much anywhere while relating the action with trackers and on-the-water commentary, we choose to move the racing to within shouting distance of the shore – why?

After what was clearly a disastrous sporting broadcast in Marseille for the last games it sounds like there are some pretty drastic changes being considered. But it also sounds like the Olympic broadcasters are having a big say in how the sport will look going forwards and, despite having worked in and seen the pressures that TV faces to bring sailing to our screens, I don’t think that’s the answer.

The television world itself is facing big challenges as audiences head to other platforms and media, and I don’t believe it’s in the right position to tell a sport how to conduct itself. Because you then risk creating something that bears little resemblance to the sport as its enthusiasts and grassroots participants know it – and then you risk losing the support of a community that should be the core supporters.

Imagine a future where we only have one race to decide the Olympic Games results. Is this really what winning an Olympic medal is all about, or are we gradually ensuring that sailing is driven out of the games?

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