Cats back in Olympics? A step forward at ISAF mid year conference

Some good news sent by Nick Dewhirst, one of the key members of the Cat Olympic campaign lobby. Photo: Andrea Francolini

Too much info to digest but it seems that isaf Olympic Comission, where Phil Jones (Australian Sailng Fed) is Chairman, has presented a detailed report to isaf with solid arguments on the bad decisions taken on the past that include multis out of the games, and also presented some guidelines that isaf should follow for not losing its Olympic status.

In short Phil Jones message to isaf president and the rest of the monohull lobbyers:

If we continue with this path of closing the doors to the appeal (Fast, Fun, TV , Commercially) of high performance sailing (Multis, High perf dinghies) we’ll find ourselves out of the Olympics as a Sport, forget about Tornado not being at the games, we are in a situation where the ten remaining classes can be throw out of the Olympic Program for good.

The IOC once recommend isaf to make the Olympic classes more attractive and to reduce costs too by leaving keel boats out, isaf didn´t listen and they (isaf) may have a payback that could affect the status and existence of the sport governing body and with it, the entire sailing community.