Ben Ainslie habla acerca del velerismo olímpico

Ben talks to the next generation of Olympic sailors in Gothenburg

The World Yacht Racing Forum provides the opportunity for thought leaders in the sport of sailing to have a platform to express their opinions about the way in which things are being done well and the areas that might need improvement.

This year, four time Olympic Gold Medallist - Ben Ainslie gave a keynote address to the forum in Gothenburg. 

This is what Ben had to say about the Olympic classes. We'll publish his thoughts on the America's Cup soon. (traducción hacer click en bandera inglesa en la esquina superior derecha)

Ben Ainslie Talks About Olympic Sailing.

“Good morning and thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. As a competitive sailor it’s not often that I get a chance to speak publicly about a sport that all of us are so passionate about – so I am really grateful for that opportunity.

I last went to one of these forums four years ago, it was the first one in Monaco and I thought it was a great idea to get so many likeminded people together and discuss how to improve the sport.

So on behalf of all the sailors I’d just like to thank all of you for your efforts to try and move the sport forwards.

Of course things aren’t necessarily perfect and things need to be improved as we progress the sport forwards. My personal background has been in Olympic sailing and the America’s Cup – inshore sailing if you like, despite a few offshore jaunts – some Sydney Hobart races and Transpac races. I think there are people in this room who are far more qualified to talk about the offshore side of the sport.

So I would like to talk today about the America’s Cup and the Olympic games rather than sailing as a whole and in particular some of the issues surrounding these two events.

I think young sailors today have better support and opportunities than ever before due to the increasing professionalism at every level of the sport. When I first began sailing 20 odd years ago – as many of you in this room might remember – sailors trained and competed part-time and tried to hold down part-time jobs and careers. There were very few professional teams and those that were, were the ones that came out on top at the end of the day.

And nowadays it’s very different. The commercial side of sailing is much more defined and developed. It has allowed sailors to source sponsorship and there is a growing realisation that top performers need financial support and government finding has also become a major part of every national sailing committee.

Plans have been developed, funding pathways created, rights organised, goals set and proper accountability practices put in place.

However commercialisation comes at a cost and it is vital that as a sport we appreciate the balance between developing a visually attractive sport while at the same time preserving the integrity of the racing. That’s something that personally I think is absolutely crucial.

Much has been said about the medal race format at the Olympic regatta. The recent games in London were a huge success. In Weymouth, the sailing event was fantastic on and off the water with final medal races in front of five or six thousand spectators on the Nothe headland providing some of the most exciting sailing we’ve ever seen.

I think the fans onshore had a great time and as a competitor, you can see what it meant to everyone there racing. It was very special to hear and see such support.

But you are probably not surprised to hear that the medal race format is not universally popular from the sailor’s perspective. Why is that?

There has been a shift across sailing and particularly Olympic sailing over the last six years or so to maximising the importance of the final race and to increase the likelihood that the final race will decide the winners.

And already, since this last Olympics there are some rather disturbing suggestions that in the future perhaps the medal race should be a winner takes all final race or perhaps even a series of medal races on that final day to establish the winners.

And I can’t say to you enough today how wrong that would be.

Sailing is like golf. It has an element of randomness attached to it. I’m not going to call it luck, but maybe randomness is a better word.

Tiger Woods might be out there on the morning of the British Open playing six under par in perfect conditions and then the next afternoon Rory Mcilroy might be out there having to play a round in thunderstorms and torrential conditions that we can often see in the UK. I guess that’s why golf tournaments last for four days so that things can be evened out a bit.

For the same reason, we have a series of races in sailing that helps to even out the random factor. The wind and the water are our field of play – not a track or field or stadium.

Like in golf, winning in sailing is about the person who makes the least number of mistakes. It’s not about necessarily sailing the perfect race.

The Olympic track in our sport is as hard as it comes. It requires a huge amount of dedication and sacrifice from a young age to make it to the top. We can’t expect young sailors to put everything into their lives in pursuit of a goal only for it to be decided by a crazy format.

Despite the current medal race format, even in these last games, we saw in the 49er class and the Windsurfer class – those gold medals were already decided before the final race and that was down to the incredible performances of Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen in the 49er and Dorian Van Rijsselberge in the Windsurfer.

Are we seriously suggesting that these sailors should be penalised further because they are so good? Is it not hard enough already for the best sailors to come out on top.

To my mind, we have reached a cliff here in terms of maximising the importance of the final race and return for the benefit of the spectators and TV and if this trend continues then to my mind the integrity of the racing will be forever lost and I’m not sure if Olympic sailing will ever recover from that.

Olympic sailing is not the X-Games – it never has been and it never will be. What people want to see are the very best sailors competing at the highest level in the best boats with the best performers eventually coming out on top.

And yes we want the final race to be exciting for viewers and spectators, but it is vital that we retain the integrity of the true sporting challenge.

Having hung up my hiking boots recently and signed off my last Olympic race I’d like to touch on a couple of other points in relation to Olympic sailing.

The Olympic class selection process is something which I find particularly frustrating. How can we be in a position where we found ourselves in a few weeks ago, where at the end of this most recent Olympic cycle the men and women Olympic windsurfers sold their gear and had to go out and buy a kite and board and learn how to start kite surfing – only for three months later to have the decision to be overturned and windsurfing to be back in the games.

Honestly, I think that makes our sport look weak. It’s a huge waste of everyone’s time and money and there has been a lot of heartache that has been involved with that transition.

I’m not saying that the decision is necessarily the wrong decision, but it is more that the process of making that decision is wrong and we have to ask the question – how can we do that better in the future?

I also believe that it is crazy to be in a position where a class can be selected for only a single Olympic cycle. The women’s match racing is a fantastic example of that. A huge amount of time and money was spent developing a class, bringing sailors in to learn how to sail a new class, setting it up and everything that goes into that – only for it to be thrown out and all of that time and effort effectively wasted.

We should be looking at having classes in the Olympics that last for at least two and maybe three cycles if we are going to bring in a new class and give that class time to grow.

So what criteria should be applied when choosing a class at the Olympic Games?

My 1-2-3 step thoughts are pretty simple. The classes need to be exciting, they need to be physically challenging and they need to cover the weight ranges for the men and women.

I also believe that there are too many Olympic classes and that going forward we need to consolidate on that. We need to pick the right classes and then give them the time out there on the Olympic arena to build on that.

I fully appreciate the time and effort that members of ISAF committees are putting in, but in my twenty years of Olympic sailing at the highest level I have never once been given the opportunity of a voice or an opinion to vote.

That may possibly be my own fault for focusing on the job at hand and the sailing rather than getting involved in politics, but I really believe that more sailors should be involved in these decisions so that you have the buy-in from the grass roots where it matters to move forwards.

I think fundamentally, moving forwards there should be a better Olympic class event, one that helps to generate world rankings.

I want to ask you a question. Can anyone guess what my official Finn class world ranking is after winning the Olympic Games and the World Championships this year?

It’s actually 13th in the world, which is not quite what I was hoping for after such a good year, but the irony is that the person who finished 13th at the last Olympic games is – you guessed it – number 1 in the world, so that sort of shows you the credibility of the rankings as they are now.

Why can’t the world rankings mean something? Why can’t they count towards Olympic qualification? And why can’t they cover more events over more nations and more sailors so that more athletes have the chance to race?

To be fair, I know that this is not something new. I know that ISAF are working hard at this, but I think we need to work harder.

For a tennis player to be ranked number 1 in the world – that really means something and that should be the same in sailing.”

Fuente: http://www.yachtracing.biz/blog/2012/12/ben-ainslie-keynote-wyrf-olympics/