Groundbreaking change for Laser Class

The proposed change to the International Laser Class Association (ILCA) Class Rules to modify the definition of a builder has been approved by more than two-thirds of the members responding to the published ballot. This rule change proposal was to remove the requirement for a class approved builder to have the rights to use a Laser trademark.

Voting concluded on July 31, after which the process began to verify the ballots with the ILCA District associations to confirm whether each voter is a current member of the class.

The purpose of the rule change was to insure the ILCA could meet the World Sailing requirement for Olympic equipment following the selection of the Laser and Laser Radial for the Men’s and Women’s One-Person Dinghy events at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

It is now a World Sailing policy that for equipment selected for Olympic events, any interested party who meets the necessary technical qualifications will be able to manufacture and sell this equipment. Prior to this change, manufacturing of Laser equipment was restricted to three builders.

Although the verification process is ongoing, with a few districts yet to confirm their voting members, enough ballots have been verified to determine with mathematical certainty the result of the vote – that the two-thirds majority required to amend the class rules has been exceeded and the rule change proposal has been approved.

Of the currently confirmed votes, the result is 81% YES, 19% NO. Based on the ballots remaining to be confirmed, it is expected that the final result will be approximately 79% YES, 21% NO.

Based on these results, ILCA has submitted the rule change proposal to World Sailing as required under World Sailing Regulation 10, and the change will go into immediate effect after World Sailing confirmation is received.

ILCA will continue to work with the member Districts to verify the remaining ballots to obtain the final voting results and ILCA will then engage an independent audit to certify the results.

ILCA would like to thank all the members who participated in the rule change voting process and the member districts for their timely verification of the ballots.

Source: ILCA