Aim high

Andy Rice reports on ISAF's first steps along the path that will 'hopefully' lead to a women's Olympic skiff class for 2012

Women's Olympic Skiff Evaluation Trial

Do women want to sail high-performance skiffs in the Olympics? Yes! So will there be high-performance skiffs for Weymouth 2012? Don't be silly, no one knows the answer to that! Such is the way of ISAF politics that not even head honcho Göran Petersson would be able to answer that with any uncertainty.

But at least women's skiff sailing has now taken an important first step towards Olympic inclusion, after a light-wind but nevertheless satisfactory evaluation trial in Hyères in mid-April. There were six entrants: the 29er single-trapeze skiff, its more powerful twin-trapeze variant known as the 29erXX, the International 14, the RS800 and two 12ft Cherub designs, the Daemon and the GT60.

The evaluation trial was set up in Hyères right before the Semaine Olympique Française, so this meant there was a steady stream of existing female Olympic sailors who were only too ready to take time out of their Yngling, 470 and Laser Radial campaigns to come to have a play in these more exotic craft sitting in the Olympic boatpark. The location and timing of the trial was a good move on the part of Dina Kowalyshyn and her evaluation committee, as this is the only way you'd ever convince busy Olympic aspirants to break away from their preparations for China 2008.

Kowalyshyn said there were two main aims for the four-day trial:
1. To see if there was an appetite among women sailors for a high-performance skiff in the Olympics.
2. To find out if there were any boats in existence that would be suitable for the task.

To read the remainder of this and many other articles, please purchase your copy of the June 2007 edition of Seahorse International Sailing available at selected newsstands or by calling: + 44 (0) 1590 671899 or by email at: info@seahorse.co.uk

Individual copies as well as subscriptions can both be purchased online at: www.seahorsemagazine.com