Cayard out at US Failing

[dogwatch]

It may be different, as the "grassroots" funding comes from e.g. Sports England whereas the "elite" funding is coordinated by Team GB. I'm aware of two clubs local to me that got funding towards club rebuilding. One came through one route, one through the other.

 

[bgytr]

It may be different, as the "grassroots" funding comes from e.g. Sports England whereas the "elite" funding is coordinated by Team GB. I'm aware of two clubs local to me that got funding towards club rebuilding. One came through one route, one through the other.

Does any of that money on your side of the pond come from tax dollars? Just curious.

 

[sailman]

As far as olympics, the United States needs 1) a permanent european training base. They are the equivalent of the jamaican bobsled team w/o the cold weather training venue, without this.

2) The US Needs 5 fully funded teams in each olympic discipline, w/ 4-5 partially funded development teams in waiting.

Just these 2 simple things alone could lead to massive games at the olympic level for USA. We dont need a rocket science / brain surgeon to run the sport, again this can all be solved w a couple calls to the right deep pocketed billionaire american sailing families. We've got several of those, they just need to pony up.

Why? What value does that bring to US Sailing? You are advocating for a fraction of a percent of the sailing community, when the vast majority of US Sailing members are Club racers and cruisers (most of whom could care less about Olympic sailing).

 

[dogwatch]

Does any of that money on your side of the pond come from tax dollars? Just curious.

That would be pounds! Yes, most of it is lottery money but some of it comes from tax.

 

[PeterHuston]

Petey, you've had an awful lot of involvement in this sinking ship over the years. And I dont think your ban of coach boats is the silver bullet for our team like you imagine. And we could easily go green by using electric outboards, once those become ubiquitous. Just need the market to catch up on that. I do agree that its not 100% a money problem, but thats a big part of it. Bottom line, we can bitch about World Sailing or we can adapt to the new parameters...

I'm not sure who you are, so based on your single letter name I'll call you Marky, or is it Mary, hard to know.

Contrary to your opinion, I was not involved with the sinking ship on the inside for the last 20 years. I have been on the outside, using my knowledge and relationships made previously to bring a life boat to those who were being abandoned, or otherwise used, by the inept captains of said sinking ship.

The issue with coach boats is not just fuel, and the fake green initiative by WS. It's basic logistics. Have you ever had to find parking for boats and trailers for a regatta with even 50+ coach boats? It's a huge pain in the ass and limits the number of places regattas of that sort can be held. More to the point, other than the well funded countries, which is really only about 5, paying for coach boats is an expense they can't afford, or it would be money far better spent on direct sailor support. I agree it is not a critical factor the US, I just used that as one example of something our WS delegation could be dealing with. A lot of times WS politics is just about fucking with some other country, for a variety of reasons.

Raul Gardini once said "the America's Cup is a street fight with cold knives". A lot of sailing isn't a whole lot different, particularly within WS. Using that analogy, US Sailing has gone from having a bunch of switchblades to a dull butter knife.

 

[dogwatch]

Well Peter, it is disturbing to me to find myself in agreement with you but in this instance I do. The flotilla of coach boats at some major dinghy regattas is a sight we could well do without. It isn't however limited to WS events, try an ILCA Youths.

 

[Reference]

Everyone’s blaming the United States’ poor Olympic results on funding, or USS leadership, coach boats,etc….

What if we just don’t have very good sailors? Here, its mostly the rich kids who sail. Might not be the best gene pool.

 

[eliboat]

The budget pie chart posted above says it all. It’s pretty clear that spending almost half of the total budget on Olympic sailing isn’t delivering on that front, and it’s quite obvious that this singular focus over the years has come at the expense of all the other sailing that takes place. I’m going to sound like an old fart here (and I’m not relative to a lot of folks here) but if you draw a Venn diagram of US Olympic medals and the activity going on in all the various One design fleets you would see that we did really tell at the olympics when we had a vibrant and varied one design scene. We have the opposite of that now. Now the UK has a VERY vibrant one design scene, much of it enabled by the toys the the Portsmouth yardstick. As others have mentioned, why our “leaders” can’t grasp this is baffling.

 

[pqbon]

Do we? So far as we do in an organised way, that's largely organised by clubs and financed by local sailors. Government/lottery does put some money into grassroots sailing (which is a different pot to "elite sport") but it isn't all that much. Mostly, Feva and 29er kid is paid for by bank of mum and dad. RYA youth squad certainly exists but I would not call that the bottom of the pyramid.

Having been involved in club leadership on both countries --- the RYA does a LOT more at the club level.

RYA has a lot of programs that are available - a lot of enabling for non-commercial training centres - a lot of support for race coaching - legal advisement for member clubs... just lots of little things. The RYA doesn't run clubs but does provide a lot of resources that help clubs and are designed to help make the sport attractive like On Board...

US Sailing really just didn't offer anything for a small club or for the individual sailor.

 

[kent_island_sailor]

Well Peter, it is disturbing to me to find myself in agreement with you but in this instance I do. The flotilla of coach boats at some major dinghy regattas is a sight we could well do without. It isn't however limited to WS events, try an ILCA Youths.

I have often thought that dinghy regattas probably use at least as much gasoline as powerboat races do

 

[pqbon]

The budget pie chart posted above says it all. It’s pretty clear that spending almost half of the total budget on Olympic sailing isn’t delivering on that front, and it’s quite obvious that this singular focus over the years has come at the expense of all the other sailing that takes place. I’m going to sound like an old fart here (and I’m not relative to a lot of folks here) but if you draw a Venn diagram of US Olympic medals and the activity going on in all the various One design fleets you would see that we did really tell at the olympics when we had a vibrant and varied one design scene. We have the opposite of that now. Now the UK has a VERY vibrant one design scene, much of it enabled by the toys the the Portsmouth yardstick. As others have mentioned, why our “leaders” can’t grasp this is baffling.

The thing is as stated above the RYA budget for a smaller country with few people is much larger than US Sailing.

To be truly effective that whole pie needs to grow. I'm not sure the proportion of Olympic spending is wrong but the whole pie is laughably small.

 

[pqbon]

Everyone’s blaming the United States’ poor Olympic results on funding, or USS leadership, coach boats,etc….

What if we just don’t have very good sailors? Here, its mostly the rich kids who sail. Might not be the best gene pool.

But that is all part of it --- poor funding means only rich sailors can afford to campaign. Campaigning isn't free if you need to house yourselves, pay for coaching, events, boats (ideally around the world to compete in the world class events), kit, etc...

But it also starts at the bottom if you aren't introducing enough kids to sailing and giving them a realistic (expense-wise) pathway you won't get any but those whose parents don't care about the cost and option.

 

[PeterHuston]

re: 1-- what does a waterfront compound in Hyeres go for these days? Would need room for boat storage and team vans, and housing of course. Probably at least a $40mil+ USD proposition, but chump change for Larry Ellison, Bill Koch, Devos, etc. It would take this sort of dramatic investment to really turn things around for Team USA

What exactly do you think Cayard was doing? It was basically exactly this in terms of raising money.

The notion of having 5 full teams at a compound though...have you done the math on all that?

One full team is 14 sailors. You want 5 full teams, that's 70 sailors. Now add a coach for every team, that's another 10, so 80. Now add some admin, communication/sponsor fulfillment types, call that another 5, plus shipwrights and maybe a gopher or two. Call it a squad of 90 people.

How much is each of them going to be paid, or do you expect mom and dad to pay for all the sailors. The mom and dad approach only works in very limited cases.

Even at $50k per year per squad member x 90, is $4.5 million per year, which is an income rate that no one is going to accept for that sort of job. Now add in transport and other logistics costs, We haven't even gotten to boats ect. Now add in housing and food.

And you want a waterfront base to hold all this. Where is everyone going to sleep and eat? You going to have an Oakcliff style dorm. How many bedrooms/bathrooms? Who is managing all that, and paying for those costs?

You think some billionaire ought to fund all this just because they are rich. Maybe you could do the asking. I do hope you are able to be successful.

 

[PeterHuston]

Just curious, with the focus on the board, here does Alan Ostfield (formerly with the Pistons, etc.) fall into this conversation? He probably does have FU money. Is the board really driving that much of the decision making? Is the staff getting the power to operate/decide? Off the cuff it felt like Jepson and Ostfield were on the same page but want to be clear on attribution.

I don't know anything other than the press release about Ostfield. What I have heard though is there will be a lot of pressure put on from outside to get the "non-sailing CEO removed".

 

[pqbon]

Do we? So far as we do in an organised way, that's largely organised by clubs and financed by local sailors. Government/lottery does put some money into grassroots sailing (which is a different pot to "elite sport") but it isn't all that much. Mostly, Feva and 29er kid is paid for by bank of mum and dad. RYA youth squad certainly exists but I would not call that the bottom of the pyramid.

Toppers and Fevas are relatively inexpensive classes for families to support.

I have a friend who pulled his kid out of Oppies and into Toppers because the level of sailing was about equal and the equipment expenses were like and order of magnitude less at the pointy end of the fleet (his son was consistently in the top 10 nationally).

The US doesn't really have any inexpensive national or every large regional JR boats outside of Oppies and Radials in my experience. I don't even remember a strong 29er system in place.

Lots of regions have endemic youth boats but the regions are pretty disparate. There isn't an effort to have the top JRs in small regional classes race against each other even at the larger level forget the national level.

 

[kent_island_sailor]

Take it back to first principles:
Sailing, while getting a pandemic boost from the voracious money spenders with Covid Cash, is still a shadow of what it once was.
Sailboat racing likewise is not what it once was.
The Olympics are now seen as corrupt.
This is a lot of adverse current to contend with, never mind that Olympic sailing is not really something that is hugely important to a lot of sailors, let alone random Americans.

 

[floater]

The Olympics are now seen as corrupt.

sad but true.

(to clarify - not sailing. simply the IOC). fuck those guys.

 

[M@AYC]

What exactly do you think Cayard was doing? It was basically exactly this in terms of raising money.

The notion of having 5 full teams at a compound though...have you done the math on all that?

One full team is 14 sailors. You want 5 full teams, that's 70 sailors. Now add a coach for every team, that's another 10, so 80. Now add some admin, communication/sponsor fulfillment types, call that another 5, plus shipwrights and maybe a gopher or two. Call it a squad of 90 people.

How much is each of them going to be paid, or do you expect mom and dad to pay for all the sailors. The mom and dad approach only works in very limited cases.

Even at $50k per year per squad member x 90, is $4.5 million per year, which is an income rate that no one is going to accept for that sort of job. Now add in transport and other logistics costs, We haven't even gotten to boats ect. Now add in housing and food.

And you want a waterfront base to hold all this. Where is everyone going to sleep and eat? You going to have an Oakcliff style dorm. How many bedrooms/bathrooms? Who is managing all that, and paying for those costs?

You think some billionaire ought to fund all this just because they are rich. Maybe you could do the asking. I do hope you are able to be successful.

If somebody actually got off their ass and put together a highly detailed plan-- including blueprints, detailed budgets, etc for the Compound, then Yes, I think Larry, Bill, Doug and the gang would cut checks.

 

[JimC]

. US Failing needs to split into two different organizations: US Sailing and US Olympic Sailing.

But the RYA, for example, has a far wider brief than US Sailing. It takes responsibility for all recreational boating, power and sail, is involved with goverment legislation and goodness knows what else. I recall taking a look at their internal phone directory and posts related to sailboat racing were a considerable minority, and Olympics only a part of that.

 

[cbulger]

Do we? So far as we do in an organised way, that's largely organised by clubs and financed by local sailors. Government/lottery does put some money into grassroots sailing (which is a different pot to "elite sport") but it isn't all that much. Mostly, Feva and 29er kid is paid for by bank of mum and dad. RYA youth squad certainly exists but I would not call that the bottom of the pyramid.

The pyramid I’m talking about is adult dinghy sailing - sailing without lead - or what I call Athletic sailing. Most of that “funding” in countries like the UK is grassroots- the best kind of funding. This is the type of sailing in the Olympics and American adults have largely abandoned this part of the sport. Our clubs have lost most of their adult dinghy fleets and dinghy clubs are non-existent. We need grassroots efforts to get back in the game. Can’t collect medals in sports that your country doesn’t play. Seen many African ice hockey medals?