World Sailing Federation: Voting irregularities in voting on Olympic classes?

Did everything go right with the choice of sailing disciplines for the 2024 Olympic Games? The elimination of the Finn class, the reinstallation of kitesurfing and offshore sailing as mixed competitions had already caused waves to rise following the hotly debated decisions at the annual meeting of the World Sailing Federation in Sarasota, Florida, at the beginning of November. In particular, the last-minute proposal by World Sailing President Kim Andersen to introduce offshore sailing as an Olympic event took many sailors and member associations by surprise, as well as attracting both supporters and critics.

Because such a motion had already been rejected once at the World Sailing Meeting in May, at least 75 per cent of the votes of the member associations were required for the election in Sarasota, which was narrowly achieved in the vote. Now the online magazine "Sailing Illustrated" is at least questioning the correct course of the election. YACHT online has also submitted an enquiry to the World Sailing Federation, the answer to which is still pending. We will update our reporting as soon as we receive a response from World Sailing.

"Sailing Illustrated" editor Tom Ehman reports in its today's edition under the headline "World Sailing: Allegations of voting irregularities or worse at the annual meeting in Sarasota" about several allegedly incorrectly recorded votes and writes that he has read two correspondingly angry e-mails to the World Sailing Federation from the members concerned, who feel that they or their voting decisions have been incorrectly recorded. And there are said to be more such emails. According to the report, it remains to be seen whether the votes were simply recorded incorrectly during the electronic voting process or whether something even worse had happened. The discrepancies came to light because the World Sailing Federation sent out the minutes of the annual meeting and its election results to its members last Friday. For the first time, it was noted in a list by name which association and representative had voted on which motions and how. During the vote itself, only the number of votes in favour, against or abstention were shown.

UPDATE (Monday, 3 December, 4.45 am): In response to an enquiry from YACHT online, the World Sailing Association announced that there will be an extraordinary conference call of the Executive Committee later today to discuss the information provided by Council members regarding the election at the annual meeting in Sarasota (Florida). This will be followed by a statement from World Sailing.