Australian Sailing President, Australian Olympic Committee Member and Past CYCA Commodore Matt Allen last week attended World Sailing’s annual conference – at which some significant changes to Olympic Sailing were made.
On 4 November 2018 World Sailing’s Council approved the introduction of a Mixed Two-Person Keelboat Offshore Event for the 2024 Paris Olympics. This introduction, ultimately, will see sailing soar to new heights in terms of viewer numbers and ultimately, hopefully, a higher participation level than ever before.
Here CYCA Commodore Paul Billingham asks Matt about how this will affect the future of sailing at the Club, in the country and around the world.
COMMODORE PAUL BILLINGHAM: Matt, it’s been a busy week – and the result of all the hard work over many years is pretty significant!
AUSTRALIAN SAILING PRESIDENT MATT ALLEN: I got back on Wednesday morning and it’s been a very full process looking at the whole structure of the Olympic Games. One of the things we’ve been looking at is getting sailing to a greater participation level and spectator level. In the last Olympics there was about 257 million people around the world watching sailing – that put us into the second-bottom group as a sport, D.
One of the things we need to do as a sport – and I’ve said this to World Sailing – is we’ve got to try to find ways to increase the number of spectators at the Olympics. It gives the sport a number of benefits – including more revenue for World Sailing from the IOC – but the more important thing is if we get to, say, 500 million, that’s going to grow the sport globally. That’s really the main aim of what we’re trying to do.
BILLINGHAM: How will sailing benefit?
ALLEN: We’re going to have the eyes of the world on us with no other events occurring at the same time. This was a great opportunity to get offshore keelboats into the Olympics and run an event that goes for two nights, over three days. With the Olympics starting in the morning most days and ending at night, we can capture that audience that is otherwise unengaged. There’ll be no other live Olympic sporting event at that time, so for eight or nine hours, given we’re launching for Paris in 2024, we’ll have large parts of Asia and Australasia that’ll be going ‘there’s no other sporting event on – oh, there’s sailing’. It’s a great opportunity for the sport.
It’s really exciting, particularly for clubs like the Cruising Yacht Club, that are predominantly offshore keelboats – bringing clubs like this into the Olympic Games.
BILLINGHAM: How will the event run? A big question will be the type of equipment that will be used – I’m assuming some form of one-design boat, maybe still on the drawing board, will be specified?
ALLEN: We haven’t really worked on the course as yet, but it’ll be starting in Marseilles and we’ll do what we can to have the finish at midday or something like that – so we can engage with the local spectators.
It’ll be a one-design competition and we’ve got a lot of work to do on what it is exactly, but it’ll be between six and 10 metres long, double-handed, male and female. The aim is to keep the costs down as much as possible, and using supplied equipment.
This gives us a gender balance, very important for sailing to have in the Olympic Games, not only a medal level but at an athlete-number level and this solves the problem sailing has had from day one to 2024, when it will finally have gender balance.
In Marseilles , France’s second biggest city, they are incredibly passionate about sailing. There the sailors are household names, more than probably any other country. This is a great way to start it off.
It’s been great to get this up with Stan Honey and Gary Jobson, supported by the French Sailing Federation – once it came on the agenda for 2024 the French were right behind it.
BILLINGHAM: Where to next?
ALLEN: We’ve got to start defining the boat we want, working with suppliers/manufacturers, whether we’re using an existing or new class, then run the Continental Qualifiers – there’s a lot of work to do but we’re five-and-a-half years away.
I think we’ll be aiming to have 20 teams and I think, with Australia having I think the largest representation in the last Volvo Ocean Race, there’s plenty of people with the capacity, both male and female who could do it.
We’re yet to define a lot of things about the race, but we’re very keen to make it a sailor’s race – limiting the information/technology available on board, just trying to pitch sailor versus sailor.
BILLINGHAM: It’s a very exciting time for the sport – and the Club!
ALLEN: It is very exciting. There’s plenty of work to do still but the future looks very bright!
