Day Four In Madrid

It was full steam ahead in the meeting rooms of Madrid as day four of the ISAF Annual Conference threw the spotlight on women’s match racing at the 2012 Olympic Games.

The Match Racing Committee meeting drew a big audience in their meeting room.

The key topics in the meeting were the selection of the equipment for the event and the timing of that selection. The ISAF Regulations require that the equipment for the Olympic Games is selected four years in advance at the Conference. However Deferred Submission M04-08 from the ISAF Executive Committee gives provision for this decision to be delayed.

In a lively debate, that brought forward the opposing ideas of: 1. naming the equipment as late as possible to keep to the traditional match racing structure of using different equipment around the world and; 2. selecting the equipment now to allow nations to begin developing their national programmes with the security of knowing the equipment that will be used. The debate boiled down to a vote on whether or not the Committee believed the equipment should be selected in November this year and it was the latter view that prevailed, by a narrow margin of four votes to three.

The Committee then moved on to look at the choice of equipment. Dina Kowalyshyn (USA) presented the views of the Working Party who drafted Submission 095-08 to the Committee. "We endorse the view that supplied equipment is firmly a part of the match racing discipline and that should continue to be the case," Kowalyshyn explained. She went on to say the Working Party had spent most of its time looking at the equipment currently available on the market and the Elliott 6m, already used widely in match racing events in Oceania including at the 2008 ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championship in Auckland, was their top choice, although with some modifications to the current boat.

On Monday, amongst the key meetings in Madrid are the ISAF Race Officials Committee, the Constitution Committee and the Regional Games Committee.

ISAF Meetings microsite - www.sailing.org/meetings