What if Devo was right?
Published on July 1st, 2024
Watching the sport over the years has emboldened the Curmudgeon in us, fueling the contention that sailing is capable of evolving toward extinction. The band Devo saw the evils of progress 50 years ago. There are times when you want to shout out, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” as Iain Woolward does in this report:
No! You are not like some old fart longing for past simplicity! Take the 2024 ILCA 4 Youth World Championships on June 25-30. The good news: between them, 57 countries marshaled 277 wanna’ be Olympians (or at least professional sailors). But did they have enough fun to keep at it into adulthood? Our sport’s statistics suggest not.
Nobody has fun hanging around for three full days of measuring /registration before racing begins – even though the ILCA class is homogeneous as any and the entrants were registered long before they showed up. Time was when random checks, instant disqualification and disgrace – and banning in rare cases – was just fine.
Our sport is arguably more weather-dependent than any yet contrived. So, on top of three days of hanging around, these kids had to add days waiting for conditions deemed suitable for racing. That’s always been an issue but, as argued elsewhere, the ‘suitability’ benchmark has been ratcheting up in the interests of ‘fairness’.
Want a ludicrous example? At a recent Gold Cup for Dragons (a struggling but still a quite well supported class in Europe), the fleet didn’t even put to sea one day because the forecast suggested there wouldn’t be enough breeze. However, a nice double-digit thermal blew all afternoon. Oops. To avoid a second potential embarrassment, the fleet was ordered out good n’ early the next morning….and sat the entire day in zilch. Entry fee: about $1,000.
Time was when whining about race management was inappropriate: regattas were run by well-meaning volunteers donating their time. With very few exceptions, especially in Europe, ‘World Sailing’ events are now run by paid staff increasingly employed by for-profit companies providing end-to-end, turn-key event management, on and off the water. (E.g. The Prow Group).
As the number of professionals deemed necessary to run an event rises to include race officers, judges, protest committee members, etc., we watch as the entry fees rise commensurately. That’s okay for national sports bodies using other people’s money, but a lot less so for private individuals…..the core of our sport.
When one throws in the recent political and financial machinations in US Sailing and World Sailing, I’m beginning to wonder if the tail is now wagging the dog. Does the sport really need all the government for which we are forced to pay because, for example, competing in a World Sailing ‘sanctioned’ event is barred to those who aren’t willing to feed their particulars to the bureaucracy. (What amateur wants their results published without their permission?)
Hell, if these guys were good at growing our sport, wouldn’t it be….well….growing?