Olympic Sailing: Point – Counter-Point

The Irish Times carried an editorial by Jonathan Liew in which he found the Olympic Games had grown to include many sports, and arguably, too many. So Liew initiated a review, and found many negatives about Sailing, calling it to be “a continuing sop to super-rich men who founded the Games and still just really love yachts, basically inaccessible to most of the countries in the world, even the ones with a viable coastline.”

There was a lot of disagreement with his view… here’s what Sheila Armstrong had to say:

I learned to sail off the coast of Sligo in a three-metre Mirror dinghy built by my father sometime in the early 1990s. So did my siblings, my cousins, and my nieces and nephews. The boat is called Sideshow Bob, and it has been holed, capsized and repaired so many times that the Ship of Theseus could take notes. We travelled to competitions around Ireland and even made it abroad a few times in these Mirror dinghies. As adults, some of us graduated to larger boats and some drifted away, but we can all still tie a damn good knot. – Full report

Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Program:
Men’s One Person Dinghy – ILCA 7
Women’s One Person Dinghy – ILCA 6
Mixed Two Person Dinghy – 470
Men’s Skiff – 49er
Women’s Skiff – 49erFX
Men’s Kiteboard – Formula Kite Class
Women’s Kiteboard – Formula Kite Class
Men’s Windsurfing – iQFOiL
Women’s Windsurfing – iQFOiL
Mixed Multihull – Nacra 17

Venue: Marseille, France
Dates: July 28-August 9

Details:
• Paris website: https://www.paris2024.org/en/the-olympic-games-paris-2024/
• World Sailing microsite: https://paris2024.sailing.org/