US ILCA 7 representative for Paris 2024

[shebeen]

I think we're actually going the same way, and you make a great point that reinforces part of what I was trying to point out. While big spending can still give cyclists an advantage, the design restrictions are tight enough to ensure that people like the Eritreans can show their potential on a piece of crap, even if they can't win at world level on it. Giro history is full of greats like Gino Bartali, who had dirt poor backgrounds but could show their brilliance on crappy gear because of the restrictions.

So the most popular "equipment intensive" sport has rules that are tight enough to allow brilliance to outweigh bucks enough to allow the brilliant guys without money to show their potential, even if the big dollar teams may have the winning edge.

It sounds like we both feel that Olympic sailing should have rules that allow brilliance to outweigh bucks. From what I can see, the Laser does a pretty good job of doing that; for example when I was serious in Lasers years ago, Michael Blackburn was tuning up for his bronze winning medal campaign using an old loaner boat owned by a small club, and still beating everyone else in Australia. The guys from developing nations often had a better boat than Michael's in the pre-Olympic tuning, and no one had a better boat than Schiedt and Ainslie. It still cost money (I remember sitting with Gareth Blackburn's dad, who was paying for his campaign, while watching Olympic heats) but at least the people from developing nations had a fighting chance, which is the way it should be.

I should actually have mentioned the amount of less than 1$/day origin Colombian cyclists who have made it to the world tour.

I think we're in the same chapter if not the same page. You're maybe referring to Gareth Blanckenberg who was the RSA olympic laser sailor in 2000 and 2004, another good example. He won at youth worlds and then decided to give a campaign a go on the back of that. He joined a crew (think it was called "sail coach") with an irish coach. It was both him and Allen from Seychelles who were talented tier 2/3 nation sailors but no base in europe. I'm not sure how the funding worked but essentially it was there to bridge a gap for sailors who were going to get zero material help from their own association. Gareth got really good, peak at about #5 in the ISAF rankings in a fleet that included Scheidt, Ainslie and Goodison. They gained a 3rd team mate along the way, a guy from Slovenia called Vasili and he shot the lights out getting olympic medals.

I'm haven't looked at what programs World Sailing currently have that could help these tier2/3 nations bridge the obvious gap. Going back to cycling, the UCI has a dedicated training centre in switzerland that is open to all countries that have promising talent. They have had gold medalists come through the system there. https://www.uci.org/wcc-development/5MS5C58YJdBFKmIbmUDnfx It has its faults but there should really be something similiar for dinghy sailing based in europe, lowering the barrier to entry with kites and foiling boards is only going to do so much.



buuut now i am way off the topic. Good luck finding a Us ILCA sailor.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

This is impossible to back-up with systematic figures

Does the RYA not have dinghy participation numbers for its sport?

 

[Bill5]

Does the RYA not have dinghy participation numbers for its sport?

Sailing Classes

Sail World - The world's largest sailing news network; sail and sailing, cruising, boating news

www.yachtsandyachting.com

Go to Championship Attendance. Everything you could ask for.

 

[dogwatch]

Except accuracy, unfortunately. There's quite a lot of missing data, shown as zeros for extra confusion. Also it is only nationals attendances, which is a tiny fraction of overall sailing.

It has value as some kind of indicative tool for tracking health of given class but only if interpreted with knowledge. For instance some classes systematically switch nationals around the country but mostly there are more sailors in the south than the north (or the south or whatever) so that skews the results.

I'll give it one thing, the data is in better shape that it was a few years ago, when it seemed to be a dying project. What it isn't and never was intended to be is a general indicator of numbers sailing.

 

[Bill5]

Except accuracy, unfortunately. There's quite a lot of missing data, shown as zeros for extra confusion. Also it is only nationals attendances, which is a tiny fraction of overall sailing.

It has value as some kind of indicative tool for tracking health of given class but only if interpreted with knowledge. For instance some classes systematically switch nationals around the country but mostly there are more sailors in the south than the north (or the south or whatever) so that skews the results.

I'll give it one thing, the data is in better shape that it was a few years ago, when it seemed to be a dying project. What it isn't and never was intended to be is a general indicator of numbers sailing.

I believe the zeros are there because the fleets didn't report. It certainly isn't perfect, but it looks to be reasonably representative of dinghy racing activity. I have not seen anything like it for any other country. It also shows the significant interest in boats people have never heard of in NA or Australia.
At least 56 classes had at least 20 boats at their Nationals last year. I wonder how many classes even had Nationals in NA is 2022...

 

[MR.CLEAN]

It has value as some kind of indicative tool for tracking health of given class but only if interpreted with knowledge.

Sounds like all data in every field.

According to Saving Sailing, the USA has gone from I think 11,000,000 active sailors (who sail at least once a year) in 1979 to a bit more than a million when published (2015?), or somewhere around 90% reduction. Racing has suffered more, according to the author's analysis of US Sailing's data.

What does the UK data (interpreted with knowledge) say about trends over the past 40 years?

 

[Curious2]

I believe the zeros are there because the fleets didn't report. It certainly isn't perfect, but it looks to be reasonably representative of dinghy racing activity. I have not seen anything like it for any other country. It also shows the significant interest in boats people have never heard of in NA or Australia.
At least 56 classes had at least 20 boats at their Nationals last year. I wonder how many classes even had Nationals in NA is 2022...

I have similar data for Germany, the USA and Australia in 2014-16. To work around the issue of the nationals venue affecting the number of boats attending (which obviously affects the USA and Australia as much if not more as in the UK) the data uses a three-year average.

In the USA about 71 dinghy and scow classes had nationals at that time, with about 40 averaging over 20 boats over the three-year period. The list includes such small classes as the 5m2 and ACA open sailing canoes, with less than 10 boats. There's a total of about two and a half thousand boat on the list of all dinghy and scow nationals, which is about the same as in the UK.

The longer-term stats show a clear decline in the numbers of boats at nationals in almost all classes since the '80s and '90s but the reduction in many classes may have stabilised after that. However, some of the older classes have dwindled significantly and the newer classes are not coming close to compensating for the loss of numbers. The most popular "new" boat, the O'Pen, is 21st in the popularity rankings, with Aero close behind and the 29er a couple of spots further back.

From further digging into the data and personal experience, there's no doubt that the most popular classes are generally dramatically under-represented at national titles compared to smaller classes; in popular classes you can get lots of fleet racing without bothering to do a nats.

It's not perfect data but it seems to be better than anything else out there. One can't use national surveys of sports participation because none of them go back long enough or contain enough detail. Membership numbers are very distorted by class and national association policies. So nationals attendance is certainly not perfect data, but it seems to be a lot better than anything else available.

 

[Curious2]

Sounds like all data in every field.

According to Saving Sailing, the USA has gone from I think 11,000,000 active sailors (who sail at least once a year) in 1979 to a bit more than a million when published (2015?), or somewhere around 90% reduction. Racing has suffered more, according to the author's analysis of US Sailing's data.

What does the UK data (interpreted with knowledge) say about trends over the past 40 years?

US sailing participation went from 3.786mill in 2007 to 4.284m in 2009 and then down to 3.618 in 2019 and 3.486m in 2021 according to the Outdoor Sports Foundation.

Windsurfing is said to have gone from a recent peak of 1.77m in 2016 to 1.405 pre-pandemic (2019) and 1.3 in 2021, which seems to be extraordinarily high; is that including kiting and people who try it on holiday or summer camp?

https://outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2022-Outdoor-Participation-Trends-Report-1.pdf

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

US sailing participation went from 3.786mill in 2007 to 4.284m in 2009 and then down to 3.618 in 2019 and 3.486m in 2021 according to the Outdoor Sports Foundation.

Windsurfing is said to have gone from a recent peak of 1.77m in 2016 to 1.405 pre-pandemic (2019) and 1.3 in 2021, which seems to be extraordinarily high; is that including kiting and people who try it on holiday or summer camp?

https://outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2022-Outdoor-Participation-Trends-Report-1.pdf

In the methodology that reveals how OF created its numbers it shows that it does not have a contact with USS or any other sailing organization. Without an authorative source the report section on sailing has a very low confidence level. The report lists the following information partners on page 49.

• Outdoor Foundation (OF)
• National Golf Foundation (NGF)
• Snowsports Industries America (SIA)
• Tennis Industry Association (TIA)
• USA Football
• United States Tennis Association (USTA)
• International Health and Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA)
• Sport and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA)

The study itself was complete by the following participants.

• Sports Marketing Surveys USA (SMS)
• Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) (repeat from above)
• And seven other sports industry associations that make up the Physical Activity Council (PAC)
• The participation study was designed and launched by Digital Research (DRI)

 

[Curious2]

The data came from a survey in which "18,000 online interviews were carried out with a nationwide sample of individuals from U.S. proprietary online panels representative of the U.S. population for people ages six and older. Strict quotas associated with gender, age, income, region, and ethnicity were followed to ensure a balanced sample."

The definition of "participating" allows for someone who stepped on a boat or board once at summer camp or on holiday to count. Unfortunately different countries use vastly different ways of counting sports participation so we can't get a very reliable figure to compare US sailing participation with participation in other countries.

Given the issues with obtaining the data from a national authority (how would US Sailing know how many people stepped on a sailing craft at a beach or marina, or how many people raced??) the independent interview seems OK to me although I do note that as in the UK, the number of windsurfers appears to be well overstated compared to what I hear inside the sport and its industry and therefore there's plenty of room for caution.

The frustrating thing is that these days we could get some pretty good data on racing participation but WS and NAs don't seem to bother. I suspect they may not want to know the reality.

 

[Jethrow]

The frustrating thing is that these days we could get some pretty good data on racing participation but WS and NAs don't seem to bother. I suspect they may not want to know the reality

or maybe they do know, but don't want the numbers getting out, or it'll affect their funding too much...

 

[Curious2]

Maybe someday the USA will again have a profoundly rich and well educated middle class.
We have been sitting on our asses, too lazy to work, and buying everything from the rest of the world since Reaganomics took over and destroyed the wealth of the common American.
In the mid seventies there were hundreds of US companies building hundreds of thousands of sailing toys.
By 1990 there were only a very few remaining.
No longer are there thousands of people in the USA whose next house payment will come from selling the toys they are building or stocking.
Without those thousands of motivated people doing their very best to interest someone in going sailing, there really are not as many people being introduced to the game.
Sailing is better than it ever was. The equipment is WAY better. The clothing is WAY better. The shoreside facilities are generally better. Weather prediction and access to the predictions and actual observations of approaching systems is WAY better. Available Communications methods to gather for group play have shortened to distribution of invitations from weeks to seconds.
I maintain the ONLY significant difference between having a booming sailing sport and the current struggling game is ( stand up. Take a deep breath and shout as you read the following sentence )
WE DO NOT HAVE A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHOSE NEXT MEAL RELIES UPON SUCCESSFULLY CAUSING PEOPLE TO GO SAILING.

West Coast Sailing / Zim / George may be single-handedly changing that situation.

We need a few hundred more investing their life savings to truly get the boom rolling.

I believe the next thing we need to stand on George’ shoulders and continue is a few hundred people who are eager to stock and promote sailing toys and equipment for their particular community.
We need lots of people who are sufficiently invested in making sailing happen such that they are motivated to make certain the game happens.

While every nation is very different,

You beat me to this.

I think the idea that density of population compared to olympic medals in sailing is a bit skewed. What % of Aussies and Kiwis live with in 5 miles of water with access to sailing. From what I know of Australia, and I’ve only been down there once to drop off Subarus from Japan, everyone (99%, excluding some farmers and miners) lives with in 5-10 miles of the ocean, where you may get light air but there is usually a fairly consistent sea breeze. That’s just not true in the US. The geography of the US West Coast lends there to only being a few places where you can have safe harbors to launch boats from. Excluding Florida, most of the states on the East Coast of the US people don’t live with in 5-10 miles of the ocean and have access to the water. In NYC, and I’m talking in the 4 burrows (I’m excluding Staten Island because I’m not sure), and Jersey City, I can think of 5 or 6 spots where people can keep a boat, but only 2 you can sail dinghies out of. One being my old college (and Rob Crafa has for 20+ years done an amazing job at getting kids from the Bronx on the water) and I think I saw a few Lasers at the Manhattan YC in Jersey City. Sailing just isn’t a thing. Kids in cities want to play softball. baseball, football, basketball, or video games. If we could figure out how to get kids to care about sailing I’m sure we could figure out how to get kids to care about rugby, but we can’t. There is a great quote by a famous All Blacks coach about not wanting the US to care about rugby because everyone else would be in trouble if NFL players learned and trained the game like they do football.

I don’t know much about the sailing scene in Philly, except a few good buddies from college moved there and stopped racing because it was too hard to find a ride on a boat, or the racing was too far away.

There also just isn’t the priority on access to boats. Waterfront property is not used for public access like it is in other countries.

But overall the numbers in the US are down. College sailors traditionally don’t race much after college. The Melges 15 appears to be keeping more around. The few kids scraping money together for Olympic Campaigns in various classes come from established programs in Newport, Florida, LA (ABYC seems to be the spot), and SF. Outside those 4 hot spots, olympic sailing dreams in the US are just that, dreams?

Access to boats and the water is what needs to be worked on. The death of a strong middle class is probably the answer. Raising taxes on the uber wealthy, corporations, and shit like that to get the money to actually flow back to the middle class would work, but won’t happen as long as billionaires own Congress. Strong unions would fix that too but the PR machines of every single corporation goes into over drive to keep their employees from unionizing when ever it’s even whispered. Lots of ways to fix sailing and get people to care, not sure any of it will actually happen.

Thanks for the debate. I’ll be lurking.

NOAS says that 127 million people live in coastal counties in the USA. While the 60% who live inland may skew the national culture away from coastal pursuits, there's still an enormous number of people in the USA who live close to the coast.

We do tend to get good wind here, but the coast in many places seems to be about as unfriendly as the West Coast USA is; for 45m each side of Sydney there are some great sailing areas apart from that, the 1100nm stretch from the Qld border to Melbourne has only about six all-weather ports, and half of them are small breakwater harbours (ie down to 300 yards by 300 yards). Apart from one annual regatta, all the offshore sailing in that area is just for yachts with Cat 4+ safety. The small boat sailing is on coastal lagoons or rivers. There's only about 20 clubs for 1000m outside the greater Sydney area.

The big difference seems to be that whereas small clubs along the Cali coast concentrate on yachts, on the NSW coast it's about 75% dinghies and cats.

Aus and the US both seem to be more demanding about locations than the Brits are; they sail in places we would not consider and that probably has a huge impact on their numbers and quality.

It seem to tie back in with your point about the issue of access to waterfront property for boating, though. Our non-profit clubs get much cheaper access to waterfront land and access to grants.

The other thing seems to be that in the UK, much of Europe and Australia dinghy sailing is seen as a game for all ages, not predominately one for youth as in the USA. The crappy organisation of most of our yacht fleets may play a part in that.

The US has much higher income inequality then the UK, Australia, etc but Brazil (a national with very high inequality) does well at Olympic sailing as do the Netherlands and Denmark, which have extremely low income inequality, so that's a puzzle.

Cheers, interesting chat.

 

[Curious2]

or maybe they do know, but don't want the numbers getting out, or it'll affect their funding too much...

Yep, that sounds right. I think the Australian Sports Commission has changed its funding model to reward NSOs that "increase" participation. Strangely, AS is now requiring everyone to join......

It's also been pointed out that the footy codes are promoting their sport to ever-younger age ranges because that's the easiest way to increase player numbers and therefore get more funding.

 

[MattFranzek]

I

While every nation is very different,


NOAS says that 127 million people live in coastal counties in the USA. While the 60% who live inland may skew the national culture away from coastal pursuits, there's still an enormous number of people in the USA who live close to the coast.

We do tend to get good wind here, but the coast in many places seems to be about as unfriendly as the West Coast USA is; for 45m each side of Sydney there are some great sailing areas apart from that, the 1100nm stretch from the Qld border to Melbourne has only about six all-weather ports, and half of them are small breakwater harbours (ie down to 300 yards by 300 yards). Apart from one annual regatta, all the offshore sailing in that area is just for yachts with Cat 4+ safety. The small boat sailing is on coastal lagoons or rivers. There's only about 20 clubs for 1000m outside the greater Sydney area.

The big difference seems to be that whereas small clubs along the Cali coast concentrate on yachts, on the NSW coast it's about 75% dinghies and cats.

Aus and the US both seem to be more demanding about locations than the Brits are; they sail in places we would not consider and that probably has a huge impact on their numbers and quality.

It seem to tie back in with your point about the issue of access to waterfront property for boating, though. Our non-profit clubs get much cheaper access to waterfront land and access to grants.

The other thing seems to be that in the UK, much of Europe and Australia dinghy sailing is seen as a game for all ages, not predominately one for youth as in the USA. The crappy organisation of most of our yacht fleets may play a part in that.

The US has much higher income inequality then the UK, Australia, etc but Brazil (a national with very high inequality) does well at Olympic sailing as do the Netherlands and Denmark, which have extremely low income inequality, so that's a puzzle.

Cheers, interesting chat.

It’s hard to quantify how far sailing has fallen in the US unless you walk around and look at pictures of docks and mooring fields at marinas and yacht clubs from the 1960/70s and today. Small Boat Harbor (500ish slips) is a marina in Buffalo, NY, USA on Lake Erie, and pictures from the 70s show a sea of masts. Last summer I raced on a J105 out of Small Boat Harbor, the owner forgot to tell me what dock he was on, didn’t matter because there were about 10 masts, the rest are power boats. A similar story can be told about the mooring fields at the Buffalo Canoe Club and Youngstown Yacht Club. Both clubs set 1/3 of the moorings they used to. YYC sets about 50 moorings instead of >300. This story repeats its self so many places. Americans just don’t prioritize being on the water and sailing any more. The Lightning class in Buffalo in the 70s was 100+ boats, 60 boats would show up to Districts to hope to qualify for North Americans. It’s the strongest class in the area, really the only class in the area, we had about 30 boats for districts last summer, but 10 came from out of town.

So yes, the USA has people, and a lot of people who live close to the water, but sailing just isn’t interesting to the majority of Americans. The big 4, NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL just dominate everything. Kids sports revolve around specializing at a young age and trying to make one of the leagues, not being well rounded athletes. For our local sailing, once the NFL starts its season, sailing is done. Really, boats start going away for the winter when we have 2 good months of sailing left. People don’t think about sailing, and any racing after September 1st gets 25% of the entries as anything in the summer.

It’s just as simple as outside of a few hot beds of sailing, Americans just don’t care. Long Beach, SF, Chicago, Newport RI, Annapolis, Miami and St Petersburg, maybe Charleston and Houston, are holding out, outside that, and even outside the small communities in those areas, no one cares. You even struggle to find a sailing shop other than a West Marine outside of those spots.

Someone mentioned income inequality and sailing being related. I’d add in another part, union membership. In the US, union membership is at its lowest level since WW2, and income inequality is at its highest. More interesting is union membership in the US was at its highest in the 1960s and 70s, and sailing participation (and racing) was at its highest. We had more dinghy sailing, more small boat sailing, more big boats traveling to national events, more builders building boats, more shops selling gear, more sail makers offering different options. It’s almost like a strong middle class and sailing participation are related.

But still, can’t find a US ILCA 7 possible representative, maybe an American at ILCA Masters worlds will decide to give the Olympics a shot?

 

[sunseeker]

I



It’s hard to quantify how far sailing has fallen in the US unless you walk around and look at pictures of docks and mooring fields at marinas and yacht clubs from the 1960/70s and today. Small Boat Harbor (500ish slips) is a marina in Buffalo, NY, USA on Lake Erie, and pictures from the 70s show a sea of masts. Last summer I raced on a J105 out of Small Boat Harbor, the owner forgot to tell me what dock he was on, didn’t matter because there were about 10 masts, the rest are power boats. A similar story can be told about the mooring fields at the Buffalo Canoe Club and Youngstown Yacht Club. Both clubs set 1/3 of the moorings they used to. YYC sets about 50 moorings instead of >300. This story repeats its self so many places. Americans just don’t prioritize being on the water and sailing any more. The Lightning class in Buffalo in the 70s was 100+ boats, 60 boats would show up to Districts to hope to qualify for North Americans. It’s the strongest class in the area, really the only class in the area, we had about 30 boats for districts last summer, but 10 came from out of town.

So yes, the USA has people, and a lot of people who live close to the water, but sailing just isn’t interesting to the majority of Americans. The big 4, NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL just dominate everything. Kids sports revolve around specializing at a young age and trying to make one of the leagues, not being well rounded athletes. For our local sailing, once the NFL starts its season, sailing is done. Really, boats start going away for the winter when we have 2 good months of sailing left. People don’t think about sailing, and any racing after September 1st gets 25% of the entries as anything in the summer.

It’s just as simple as outside of a few hot beds of sailing, Americans just don’t care. Long Beach, SF, Chicago, Newport RI, Annapolis, Miami and St Petersburg, maybe Charleston and Houston, are holding out, outside that, and even outside the small communities in those areas, no one cares. You even struggle to find a sailing shop other than a West Marine outside of those spots.

Someone mentioned income inequality and sailing being related. I’d add in another part, union membership. In the US, union membership is at its lowest level since WW2, and income inequality is at its highest. More interesting is union membership in the US was at its highest in the 1960s and 70s, and sailing participation (and racing) was at its highest. We had more dinghy sailing, more small boat sailing, more big boats traveling to national events, more builders building boats, more shops selling gear, more sail makers offering different options. It’s almost like a strong middle class and sailing participation are related.

But still, can’t find a US ILCA 7 possible representative, maybe an American at ILCA Masters worlds will decide to give the Olympics a shot?

Has the US even qualified for the Laser in the Olympics (I refuse to call it an ILCA).

 

[Jethrow]

They had one in '96, I know 'cause I saw him!

 

[Stanno]

Has the US even qualified for the Laser in the Olympics (I refuse to call it an ILCA).

No country has qualified for the 2024 Games yet .... first country qualifying event is the World Championships in The Hague in August 2023. Whole series of lead in events in Europe ahead of that - US ILCA 7 sailors Daniel Escudero & Thomas Form McCann have entered Palma and Hyeres this year, so are presumably on the campaign trail. I note Thomas is from Texas Corinthians Club, where the ILCA 6 Worlds were last year - a great place to sail and the club was very hospitable for the sailors and teams. My daughter learned a heck of a lot - including it's not just dolphins that follow the trawl nets in an inshore fishery!! ;-)

 

[sunseeker]

No country has qualified for the 2024 Games yet .... first country qualifying event is the World Championships in The Hague in August 2023. Whole series of lead in events in Europe ahead of that - US ILCA 7 sailors Daniel Escudero & Thomas Form McCann have entered Palma and Hyeres this year, so are presumably on the campaign trail. I note Thomas is from Texas Corinthians Club, where the ILCA 6 Worlds were last year - a great place to sail and the club was very hospitable for the sailors and teams. My daughter learned a heck of a lot - including it's not just dolphins that follow the trawl nets in an inshore fishery!! ;-)

Thanks, that’s how much attention I pay to the Olympics these days. I used to care, but as an American it is pointless to get too wrapped up in Olympic sailing any more. Collectively, we just don’t care any more. There are tiny, micro pockets of enthusiasm, and Cayard has raised and will raise a lot more money, but we have had such a shitty, terrible awful series of ineffective leaders we are decades behind the curve in everything but kites. Even with Daniella being the it girl, remains to be seen if the rest of the world will catch up to her before Paris. She’s the favorite for the gold, and anything less than that will be considered a failure.

 

[tillerman]

No country has qualified for the 2024 Games yet .... first country qualifying event is the World Championships in The Hague in August 2023. Whole series of lead in events in Europe ahead of that - US ILCA 7 sailors Daniel Escudero & Thomas Form McCann have entered Palma and Hyeres this year, so are presumably on the campaign trail. I note Thomas is from Texas Corinthians Club, where the ILCA 6 Worlds were last year - a great place to sail and the club was very hospitable for the sailors and teams. My daughter learned a heck of a lot - including it's not just dolphins that follow the trawl nets in an inshore fishery!! ;-)

So what are the odds on USA to qualify to sail at Marseilles in the ILCA7 event?

 

[dogwatch]

Daniel Escudero & Thomas Form McCann

Daniel's results at the ICLA 7 U21 Worlds were not really scintillating. Can't find any international results for Thomas McCann. Not here to piss on anyone's wheaties, just saying.