2024 Olympics

Farrah Hall who raced RS:X for US in 2012, campaigning to race it in '20, and participated in the trials
usawindsurfing.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/2024-olympic-windsurfing-sea-trials-good-spirit-great-community-great-gear-all-in-two-chapters-of-a-novel-like-blog/

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windsufering said..
That's fantastic looking forward to 100 + fleets at national events

LOL , you have obviously not got any idea what you are talking about. none of the Olympic classes in Aus or overseas have big fleets. In our winter the sailing circuit revolves around Europe and in summer they head south to Aus for Sail Sydney and Melbourne. Maybe you just stick to LT forum and stay out of the fast lane

Maybe combining all three fleets , radial , full rig and 4.7

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Chris 249 said..

Paducah said..

Chris 249 said..
Paducah, in Oz I think the "casual" or "leisure" use of RBs stopped before they got into the Olympics; they were pretty much only a racing class. But the numbers were definitely smaller at the tail end of the IMCO era than they were before the IMCO was selected, and the numbers today are larger than they were when the IMCO was in the Games. The latter part of the era when the IMCO was in the Olympics was the low point for Raceboarding.

Even in Lasers, many people in the "Olympic age" group dropped out when the class became Olympic because they knew they would be uncompetitive against the full timers. The class is now overwhelmingly made up of juniors, youth and Masters.

The page in the WF1 proposal that shows the number of Starboard foiling boards out there is a bit of a worry, because while foiling is great, if that's the future and there's only 260 such boards in the entire world, then our sport really has become pretty tiny.

I wouldn't be worried abouit the Starboard numbers. That's just one brand in an otherwise open field. If you totalled the number of race oriented boards and included larger brands like Fanatic, JP and smaller ones like FMX, Patrik, RRD, Exocet, etc, the number will be comfortably bigger. Not to mention how many top level foilers are using existing Formula boards.

The positive aspect of an Olympic foil board is that it will be the first time in 15 years that we'll have an Olympic board that one might actually want to freeride and not be absurdly expensive.

Yes, but even if that "comfortably bigger" number is say 5 times what SB has sold AND there are twice as many people on existing boards, it's still not really a major sailing class, or a big Olympic sport.

I had expected there'd be more and some people in the industry are saying that there is very strong demand for foiling, but on the other hand when I spent about 10 days at Lake Garda this European summer, it was apparent that there were normally only about 4-8 foilers out most of the time when the breeze blew. The other thing that struck me was the age of the slalom boards that most people were sailing, so it seems as if most Euros are not upgrading their windsurfing kit very often.

I would still reckon that the sailing characteristics and the extremely high standard of sailing is going to keep many people out of the class; in other foiling sailing classes you see good sailors on top quality gear get lapped in a two-lap race, and that turns many of them off. On the plus side, we may be able to pick up ex-Olympic gear fairly cheaply which could be fun.

I've also spent some time at Lake Garda, this summer (just under three weeks, in total) and agree with you. There are always flocks of RS:X -- both men and women -- out on the lake and usually only a handful of guys out on foils -- and most of those guys don't look like they're training to race. The number of proper slalom set-ups dwarfs the foilers.

On the other hand, I also watched footage of a European foil racing event on lake Silvaplana, Switzerland, and that was well populated and looked like absolute magic from both a sailing and a windsurfing perspective.

Watching that race, you could clearly see the potential for foiling windsurfers. The course covered the whole lake and included upwind sailing -- obviously. There was less pumping than one sees in a typical RS:X race but still a fair amount. Actual course sailing tactics were required, not just a killer lay-down gybe and tungsten balls.

Which makes me think that if you build it, they will come.

Few people will SERIOUSLY invest in race-level foiling gear and foiling training while foiling is still considered a fringe of the windsurfing world and even more so of the competitive windsurfing world. Those who have the motivation to do so probably already spend their time training for slalom or RS:X as their primary disciplines. For the average punter, foiling gear is EXPENSIVE and FRAGILE, the second-hand market is only just beginning to be established, and so they have no incentive to buy in to the competitive level -- it's not like the Laser class where someone can get an old boat for a crate of beer. (Sure, that will be soggy and soft and won't be competitive but it will put them in the fleet, along with those who ARE competitive, and that's the all-important first rung of the ladder.)

I, myself, look forward to the day when I'm sailing in those fleets. And I'm a punter -- I've been surfing for two sparse European seasons, can't carve through my gybes and have only just learned to water-start, this year. But I can see the future on the horizon and I know two things for certain: foiling is going to be a reality and I learn quickly.

I've stood on a board on less than 30 days, total, and I'm already one of the quickest across the water on my local lake (I think it's my stance!), quickest onto the plane when a gust (finally) hits, one of the quickest to tack, and at least planing into and surviving my gybes even if I'm not planing out of them, yet. I'm going back to Cape Town, hopefully soon, and will be back for the European summer, next year. I'll learn to gybe through sheer hard-headed stubbornness. Then I'll learn to foil. I've raced Lasers for years and so I already know a fair amount of the rest. Perhaps it takes me two more years to get race-ready. Perhaps five or ten, it doesn't matter -- the future is coming. (I won't ever be competitive but that's no problem: fighting someone for second-last is as much fun as fighting someone for first -- it's the fighting that counts.)

If anything should herald the coming of a foiling future, it should be the European love of them as evidenced at Silvaplana. There's a lot of inland water in Europe and a lot of it doesn't get 20kts more than twice a season and, then, it's probably snowing, cold-and-raining, or otherwise miserable. But a LOT of it gets at least 10kts thermal wind whenever the sun shines! Lowering the wind range (I think I heard a PWA sailor say they were aiming to race in 5, during a broadcast from Japan, this season. That's BONKERS!) would make windsurfing viable again. Foils make it cool and, unlike something like a moth, foiling windsurfing kit is relatively robust, accessible, usable and cheap. And transportable in a VW Caddy.

We'll never relive the 70s and 80s but racing on foils could bring about a Renaissance for windsurfing amongst us mere mortals who'll never be professionals, never be sponsored and never get to spend our lives travelling for wind. Races like those I saw on Silvaplana might spread to other foil-suitable inland waters -- most of which are already covered in displacement-mode dinghies proceeding sleepily around buoys whenever the weather isn't too awful -- and that would be magic.

Putting foiling windsurfers in the Olympics would increase the likelihood of that becoming a reality!

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AUS 814 said..

windsufering said..
how many do you expect at the nationals !
btw the slow lane is leading the windsurfer revival

I'm not sure ?? How many , you asked the question

LOL
you have NFI either

and tell Paducah he has NFI because he seems to think the fleets are going to be large

The foil option they recommend is the cheapest one so why wouldn't it be the most popular foil class

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WarpShuffle said..

Chris 249 said..

Paducah said..

Chris 249 said..
Paducah, in Oz I think the "casual" or "leisure" use of RBs stopped before they got into the Olympics; they were pretty much only a racing class. But the numbers were definitely smaller at the tail end of the IMCO era than they were before the IMCO was selected, and the numbers today are larger than they were when the IMCO was in the Games. The latter part of the era when the IMCO was in the Olympics was the low point for Raceboarding.

Even in Lasers, many people in the "Olympic age" group dropped out when the class became Olympic because they knew they would be uncompetitive against the full timers. The class is now overwhelmingly made up of juniors, youth and Masters.

The page in the WF1 proposal that shows the number of Starboard foiling boards out there is a bit of a worry, because while foiling is great, if that's the future and there's only 260 such boards in the entire world, then our sport really has become pretty tiny.

I wouldn't be worried abouit the Starboard numbers. That's just one brand in an otherwise open field. If you totalled the number of race oriented boards and included larger brands like Fanatic, JP and smaller ones like FMX, Patrik, RRD, Exocet, etc, the number will be comfortably bigger. Not to mention how many top level foilers are using existing Formula boards.

The positive aspect of an Olympic foil board is that it will be the first time in 15 years that we'll have an Olympic board that one might actually want to freeride and not be absurdly expensive.

Yes, but even if that "comfortably bigger" number is say 5 times what SB has sold AND there are twice as many people on existing boards, it's still not really a major sailing class, or a big Olympic sport.

I had expected there'd be more and some people in the industry are saying that there is very strong demand for foiling, but on the other hand when I spent about 10 days at Lake Garda this European summer, it was apparent that there were normally only about 4-8 foilers out most of the time when the breeze blew. The other thing that struck me was the age of the slalom boards that most people were sailing, so it seems as if most Euros are not upgrading their windsurfing kit very often.

I would still reckon that the sailing characteristics and the extremely high standard of sailing is going to keep many people out of the class; in other foiling sailing classes you see good sailors on top quality gear get lapped in a two-lap race, and that turns many of them off. On the plus side, we may be able to pick up ex-Olympic gear fairly cheaply which could be fun.

I've also spent some time at Lake Garda, this summer (just under three weeks, in total) and agree with you. There are always flocks of RS:X -- both men and women -- out on the lake and usually only a handful of guys out on foils -- and most of those guys don't look like they're training to race. The number of proper slalom set-ups dwarfs the foilers.

On the other hand, I also watched footage of a European foil racing event on lake Silvaplana, Switzerland, and that was well populated and looked like absolute magic from both a sailing and a windsurfing perspective.

Watching that race, you could clearly see the potential for foiling windsurfers. The course covered the whole lake and included upwind sailing -- obviously. There was less pumping than one sees in a typical RS:X race but still a fair amount. Actual course sailing tactics were required, not just a killer lay-down gybe and tungsten balls.

Which makes me think that if you build it, they will come.

Few people will SERIOUSLY invest in race-level foiling gear and foiling training while foiling is still considered a fringe of the windsurfing world and even more so of the competitive windsurfing world. Those who have the motivation to do so probably already spend their time training for slalom or RS:X as their primary disciplines. For the average punter, foiling gear is EXPENSIVE and FRAGILE, the second-hand market is only just beginning to be established, and so they have no incentive to buy in to the competitive level -- it's not like the Laser class where someone can get an old boat for a crate of beer. (Sure, that will be soggy and soft and won't be competitive but it will put them in the fleet, along with those who ARE competitive, and that's the all-important first rung of the ladder.)

I, myself, look forward to the day when I'm sailing in those fleets. And I'm a punter -- I've been surfing for two sparse European seasons, can't carve through my gybes and have only just learned to water-start, this year. But I can see the future on the horizon and I know two things for certain: foiling is going to be a reality and I learn quickly.

I've stood on a board on less than 30 days, total, and I'm already one of the quickest across the water on my local lake (I think it's my stance!), quickest onto the plane when a gust (finally) hits, one of the quickest to tack, and at least planing into and surviving my gybes even if I'm not planing out of them, yet. I'm going back to Cape Town, hopefully soon, and will be back for the European summer, next year. I'll learn to gybe through sheer hard-headed stubbornness. Then I'll learn to foil. I've raced Lasers for years and so I already know a fair amount of the rest. Perhaps it takes me two more years to get race-ready. Perhaps five or ten, it doesn't matter -- the future is coming. (I won't ever be competitive but that's no problem: fighting someone for second-last is as much fun as fighting someone for first -- it's the fighting that counts.)

If anything should herald the coming of a foiling future, it should be the European love of them as evidenced at Silvaplana. There's a lot of inland water in Europe and a lot of it doesn't get 20kts more than twice a season and, then, it's probably snowing, cold-and-raining, or otherwise miserable. But a LOT of it gets at least 10kts thermal wind whenever the sun shines! Lowering the wind range (I think I heard a PWA sailor say they were aiming to race in 5, during a broadcast from Japan, this season. That's BONKERS!) would make windsurfing viable again. Foils make it cool and, unlike something like a moth, foiling windsurfing kit is relatively robust, accessible, usable and cheap. And transportable in a VW Caddy.

We'll never relive the 70s and 80s but racing on foils could bring about a Renaissance for windsurfing amongst us mere mortals who'll never be professionals, never be sponsored and never get to spend our lives travelling for wind. Races like those I saw on Silvaplana might spread to other foil-suitable inland waters -- most of which are already covered in displacement-mode dinghies proceeding sleepily around buoys whenever the weather isn't too awful -- and that would be magic.

Putting foiling windsurfers in the Olympics would increase the likelihood of that becoming a reality!

Yep, if foils open up light wind sailing (as they seem to do) then it would be great. I still think that the gap between the Olympians and the average racer will be enormous, and that will turn off the average racer which may actually harm foil racing. There may be ways around the problem of the huge speed gap between Olympians and mortals, but the problem has to be recognised before it is dealt with.

I'm cautious about caring what the hell looks cool, because about 50,000 times people have done something in sailing because it looks cool and about 50,000 times it has failed to increase numbers. I'd reckon that people who are obsessed with looking cool are the last people you actually want to get into your sport. Sports chase early adopters and those who want to look cool, but since about 1873 sailing has been finding out that if you try to get the early adopters/cool addicts then you find yourself losing out - because just as soon as you have shaped your sport to get them they will run off to the next cool thing. And who wants to hang out with people who are that obsessed with fashion and being trendy?

Interesting discussion. I just read the last few pages. some great points made by many.

My observation about the growth and popularity of windsurf foiling, is that it seems to me to be dominated by the middle aged and 'masters'. The long time recreational windsurfers with some existing skills, even ex racers looking for a new challenge, that seem to be getting into it in the largest numbers. It would seem unlikely, that this pattern, (if my observation is valid) would have any impact whatsoever on the size of racing fleets, especially youth racing and Olympics hopefull fleets.

Another issue I can see is the multiple 'stages' of learning, kids would have to go through to even get to thinking about racing Windfoilers. I imagine it would have to start with conventional windsurfing, progress through 'planing' windsurfing, and then, when quite a good level of balance and skill is reached, switch to learning yet another new skill, Foiling. Will anyone be throwing totally newbie kids on foiling craft for their first lessons and expecting them to get enough success to stick with it?

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WarpShuffle said..
I've also spent some time at Lake Garda, this summer (just under three weeks, in total) and agree with you. There are always flocks of RS:X -- both men and women -- out on the lake and usually only a handful of guys out on foils -- and most of those guys don't look like they're training to race. The number of proper slalom set-ups dwarfs the foilers.

On the other hand, I also watched footage of a European foil racing event on lake Silvaplana, Switzerland, and that was well populated and looked like absolute magic from both a sailing and a windsurfing perspective.

You went to the windiest spot in Northern Italy, actually the windiest spot in Northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria and southern Germany ... of course you see more slalom equipment than foils! Drop the wind 8-10 knots (like at Silvaplana) and indeed foils pop up!

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Subsonic said..


True enough statement, saying a class being olympic doesn't necessarily attract more fresh starters (to sailing) to that class, but a class having olympic status can make it an attraction to those who are already sailing.

Sailors with an overactive competitive streak/olympic aspirations (which is quite common in sailing) will select an olympic class or olympic feeder class over another class which offers similar performance. As you stated, a new olympic class won't cause an increase in new classes at all. Quite the opposite, it can destroy other classes that are already present, and offering what the olympic class offers. I've witnessed this happen first hand.

Not sure many sailors will move into an Olympic class over another, similar, class. Look in yachts - in Australia, Etchells became much more popular than the similar Olympic Soling. In this country, 470s have generally been much less popular than the Fireball, a boat of similar configuration and performance that lost out on Olympic selection; 49ers are less popular that International 14s, which are of similar configuratio and performance; the Nacra 17 is faster than the Formula 18 but the latter is much more popular.

If we look at the patterns of class popularity, we see that the Olympic classes largely rely on having a small number of sailors in a very large number of countries, and that apart from Finn and Laser masters and Radial youth, almost none of them is as popular at national level than similar classes that are not Olympic.

You're right that the Olympic feeder classes do well because sailors and their parents dream of Olympic success, but when they realise that it's out of their reach most of those sailors drop out of the whole sport.

If we look back at previous Olympic class announcements, there's a pattern where people say "this new 49er/RSX/Nacra 17/women's match racing/men's match racing/etc type will make this style of sailing popular at grass roots level", and it basically never seems to happen. The exceptions were back when the FD and Finn were chosen about 60 years ago, and they were creations of a very different time and very different aims; strange as it may seem to us, both of them were designed from the ground up as boats that were dual purpose cruiser/racers rather than specialised racing machines for expert Olympians. So just as Olympic selection would have been a disaster for the LT, it could be a disaster for foiling.

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Chris 249 said..

Not sure many sailors will move into an Olympic class over another, similar, class. Look in yachts - in Australia, Etchells became much more popular than the similar Olympic Soling. In this country, 470s have generally been much less popular than the Fireball, a boat of similar configuration and performance that lost out on Olympic selection; 49ers are less popular that International 14s, which are of similar configuratio and performance; the Nacra 17 is faster than the Formula 18 but the latter is much more popular.

If we look at the patterns of class popularity, we see that the Olympic classes largely rely on having a small number of sailors in a very large number of countries, and that apart from Finn and Laser masters and Radial youth, almost none of them is as popular at national level than similar classes that are not Olympic.

You're right that the Olympic feeder classes do well because sailors and their parents dream of Olympic success, but when they realise that it's out of their reach most of those sailors drop out of the whole sport.

If we look back at previous Olympic class announcements, there's a pattern where people say "this new 49er/RSX/Nacra 17/women's match racing/men's match racing/etc type will make this style of sailing popular at grass roots level", and it basically never seems to happen. The exceptions were back when the FD and Finn were chosen about 60 years ago, and they were creations of a very different time and very different aims; strange as it may seem to us, both of them were designed from the ground up as boats that were dual purpose cruiser/racers rather than specialised racing machines for expert Olympians. So just as Olympic selection would have been a disaster for the LT, it could be a disaster for foiling.

As someone who sailed several Olympic dinghy classes in the 70s (Olympic selection campaigns in both 470s and FDs) followed by about 5 years campaigning a Laser at international level, I think the lack of popularity of the Olympic classes now has more to do with the funding model and the selection process than anything else.

In the late 1970s the 470 and FD were relatively healthy classes compared to what they were a decade or two later. At that time the Olympic selection was pretty much turn up at the Olympic trials regatta, and if you won the trials you got sent to the Olympics. This proved to be a bit random for some people's liking, particularly as we went to 3 Olympic games and without winning anything better than Bronze medals.

The cause of the contraction in classes such as the 470, FD, Soling etc. in my view was the over-riding focus on winning medals, and this meant picking potential winners early and funding them for overseas regatta participation and success. The net result was that if you didn't get selected as one of the elite sailors that got extensive funding, you were pretty much ruled out of any chance of Olympic selection. This killed off any grass roots support that the classes might have had at the club level, and promising sailors looked elsewhere.

The recent approach is summed up on the Australian Sailing Team website:
"Following a major review of the Olympic Sailing program after the Athens Games in 2004, where Australian Sailing came away empty-handed, a 'Gold Medal Plan' was developed with the aim of returning Australia to our position as a leading Olympic sailing nation.The Plan aimed to refine the foundations laid over previous years and complete the path to a sustainable medal-winning system from Junior to Youth to Olympic medallist.Fundamental to this strategy was the creation of the Australian Sailing Team in 2006 as a semi-autonomous entity with a highly professional approach to winning multiple medals in Beijing in 2008 and beyond."

Which is great, except the sport of sailing has contracted significantly during that time, with a lot fewer kids getting into it and aspiring to Olympic level sailing. Australia may be incredibly successful at winning Olympic medals in sailing, but the sole focus on winning medals has been to the detriment of the sport.

I'm hoping that wind foiling can avoid the pitfalls that the Olympic sailing classes, including the RSX, have fallen into, and build some grass roots support for the sport. That may mean multiple classes and possibly some low cost designs, but I'd hate to see wind foiling become another prohibitively expensive sport that excludes all but a chosen few from a chance at the Olympics.

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windsufering said..
Just a reminder at the last Nationals the lt fleet was bigger than the formula ,foil , techno and race board nationals combined .

We dont need reminding

I know quite a few people who sail race foil setups for fun, a few more who do so with raceboards. I've never heard of anyone sailing RS:X who didn't have Olympic asperations.
I would absolutely own and race a one design foil class if it was available in my area and there is no way I'm going to be remotely competitive.

I suspect it might be necessary to keep the RSX for 2024 to allow the RSX to go forward for 2020. I understand there are lobbyists around the world that are advocating just that but for reasons that foiling is not ready as yet and a new Olympic board would be better selected for 2028 once the one design class has established and in a much cheaper form.

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jirvin4505 said..



My son found this on a foiling Facebook group yesterday.
Not sure what to make of it

That really is playing hard ball, isn't it. I've never thought the RSX was a good board, but that was partly because selection process was stuffed. That has not improved, so we may have similar issues next time around.

What's really needed could be some more rigorous thinking, and some learning from past mistakes.