Olympic sailing: The decision: how to sail for Olympic medals in 2024

At the end of the long day, it was the Romanian Sailing Federation's proposal that prevailed in the World Sailing Federation's Council vote on the sailing disciplines for the 2024 Olympic Games. It can be interpreted as a compromise in the tug-of-war between the radical innovators and the advocates of the classic sailing disciplines. And also a bit of a "cheating package", because if you take a closer look, you will realise that the bottom line is that there will still be ten disciplines in six years' time. However, there will be more fleets behind them than before due to combinations.

Those in favour of a keelboat discipline were unable to prevail, meaning that an attractive and large area of international sailing will remain excluded from the Olympics in the future following the cancellation of the Star boat. Instead of one discipline, there will be four mixed disciplines in six years' time. The kiters will initially have a joint male-female discipline, the format of which is still open. And both the traditional Finn sailors and the 470 sailors are likely to retain their Olympic status in different ways - although neither of them in the same way as before. Both will have to reinvent themselves in different mixed combinations and formats.

But let's take a look at what happened at the mid-year meeting of the World Sailing Federation at London's Chelsea Football Club, where originally only the motions for the desired changes to the Olympic programme were to be discussed on Monday and voted on Tuesday. In fact, everything went much faster than expected because the really big discussions had already taken place in advance and behind the scenes. As a result, World Sailing President Kim Andersen was able to initiate and finalise the voting process on Monday evening.

And this is stated in the Romanian Sailing Association's motion M22-18, which was successful:

Five already known disciplines remain. They are:

1) One-person dinghy men - Laser (*) (**)

2) One-person dinghy women - Laser Radial (*) (**)

3) Skiff men - 49er

4) Skiff women - 49erFX

5) Two-person mixed multihull - Nacra 17

And these five disciplines are to be added:

6) Windsurfing men - new equipment (*) (**)

7) Windsurfing women - new equipment (*) (**)

8) One-person dinghy mixed - possibly Finn & a new women's dinghy in combined classification (**)

9) Two-person dinghy mixed - 470 (**)

10) Kiting Mixed - new equipment (**)

(*) = these boat classes are still under review in comparison with international antitrust law

(**) = the boats/equipment for these classes will only be decided at the Annual General Meeting of the World Sailing Federation.

Of the 56 motions, after surprisingly few discussions at the Council meeting of the World Sailing Federation on Monday, all those that had no supporters other than the proposer were initially eliminated from the vote. This left around a dozen proposals for the future Olympic programme, which were further reduced by the Council step by step by each Council member voting for their favourite and always eliminating the proposals that received no votes or had the lowest vote value. In the final battle vote, a combination prevailed with the Romanian proposal that made many sailors happy, but by no means everyone, and left as many questions unanswered as there are holes in a sieve. Most of them will only be answered in November. If at all.

Questions such as these are now preoccupying the athletes and their national associations: Which boat will the women sail in the mixed discipline of one-person dinghies alongside the Finn dinghies that are likely to be "saved"? Could it be the Moth? How will the additional boat class, which will be part of a mixed discipline yet to be defined more precisely, but will require independent training, be financed? What will the mixed discipline for kiters look like and what equipment will be suitable? Which boards will the surfers be riding across the French Olympic area in 2024 - has the RS:X really had its day? When will the next generation of 470 sailors get the chance to train in what will be in demand in 2024 (mixed sailing), when the top teams of the countries, currently and until 2020 still divided into men's and women's teams, have to prepare for the 2024 Olympic Games?

The World Sailing Federation had initially announced that it wanted to broadcast the vote live, but this good idea was not realised after all. However, the video material is to be delivered later. World Sailing also announced the publication of the exact distribution of votes in the ballots as well as further details and comments. The elective Council consists of the Danish President Kim Anderson, seven Vice-Presidents, including DSV Sports Director Nadine Stegenwalner, two Honorary Representatives (without voting rights), 28 elected members, each representing a regional group of sailing nations, as well as representatives from the Offshore Committee, the Class Committee, the Athletes' Commission and a women's representative.

YACHT online will continue to report on the decisions and the reactions to them in the coming days. Because one thing has happened time and again in the past: Olympic decisions that are turned upside down after all.