Mixed offshore sailors must fear: The end in sight before the Olympic premiere

There was great joy among keelboat sailing enthusiasts around the world when the World Sailing Federation selected the new discipline of mixed offshore in 2019 for its list for the future 2024 Olympic sailing programme. Sailing in a mixed two-man team seemed new, exciting, forward-looking and thrilling. While opponents continued to argue that the costs and other risk factors were too high even after the vote, fans of offshore sport were delighted at the opportunity that had appeared on the Olympic horizon. Many national associations got off to a flying start with investments and training measures in the difficult first year of the pandemic in 2020. This included the German Sailing Association (DSV), which put up its own money and got started. Interested athletes formed teams all over the world. These included prominent Olympians such as two-time gold medallist Shirley Robertson with round-the-world sailor Henry Bomby and French round-the-world sailor Marie Riou, who won the 2020 European Championships with Benjamin Schwartz. Six-time Spanish round the world sailor and successful Olympic coach Guillermo Altadill and the Austrian 2019 European champions Christian Kargl and Lisa Berger also sailed directly on course for the mixed offshore event.

Everyone involved knew that the discipline proposal from an international umbrella organisation such as World Sailing still needed the green light from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) before finally making the leap into the Olympic programme. However, with a few exceptions, the IOC has always followed the proposals of the umbrella organisations in the past. This time, things could turn out differently. After the first active year, the mixed offshore proponents must fear for the hoped-for premiere at the 2024 Olympic Games in Marseille. This was already announced on 7 December 2020, when the IOC Executive Board waved through the other new sailing proposals (mixed two-person dinghy/470s and mixed kiteboard) without any problems, but put a question mark over the introduction of the mixed offshore keelboat discipline and announced a more detailed review. And this is still ongoing. Accordingly, the IOC decision was postponed until 31 May 2021 at the latest.

Now a letter sent by IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell to the new World Sailing President Quanhai Li on 12 April is causing even more concern among sailing fans. According to a report by New Zealand journalist Richard Gladwell in the magazine "Sail World", it is about "challenges" that were the focus of the review commissioned by the Olympic Programme Commission. These "challenges" were "field safety, scale and complexity", "broadcast costs and complexity" and the "inability of World Sailing to deliver a World Championship".

According to Gladwell, the IOC letter points out that although the review is still ongoing, the World Sailing Federation has been asked to propose one or more alternatives for the tenth Olympic sailing discipline. This part of the letter should set alarm bells ringing for those in favour of mixed offshore. It sounds like more than just the beginning of the end. And according to Gladwell's quote from the letter, the statement even comes with a warning. It reads: "The proposal (ed.: of alternatives) is crucial to ensure that - regardless of the outcome of the offshore evaluation - the IOC Executive Board can finalise the sailing programme at its meeting on 8 June 2021, along with other outstanding decisions on disciplines and formats in other sports for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games."

The request can be interpreted clearly: Give us alternatives, otherwise you may run the risk of losing your tenth discipline. This puts the World Sailing Federation in an extremely uncomfortable position. Anyone who is aware of the efforts to reduce costs and the number of athletes at the Olympic Games as a whole can guess how great the danger is for sailing. In 2012, 380 sailors were still competing at the Olympic Games in England. This summer there will be 350 (175 men, 175 women), in 2024 only 330. World Sailing has until 26 May to find the right answers for the best defence. Which is no walk in the park in these ongoing pandemic times. Basic criteria set by the IOC make it clear that this path will probably only lead through the past. For example, the requirement that the alternative(s) must have already been tested at a World Championship organised by World Sailing. However, World Sailing is not responsible for the fact that such a World Championship for the new mixed offshore discipline could not be held during the pandemic.

The Finn sailors who were eliminated amid much prominent protest would only theoretically be considered for a comeback. Although sailing athletes weighing more than 85 kilograms would then also have the opportunity to compete again, their return would jeopardise the equal number of men and women Olympic participants that has just been achieved this summer - another declared goal of the IOC. It remains a difficult puzzle game in which the new World Sailing President Quanhai Li, the newly appointed General Manager David Graham, who was also only appointed in 2020, and the national member associations are now facing major challenges within a very short space of time after many internal disputes in recent years.