World Sailing has announced the short list of three potential Olympic sailing disciplines, one of which will be chosen to be proposed to the International Olympic Committee as sailing’s tenth medal event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, should the IOC ultimately reject the current Mixed Offshore Doubles discipline.
The short list is made up of:
Individual Men’s and Women’s Kiteboard events – Formula Kite
This event would take the form of individual fleet racing for men and women and would replace the existing Mixed Kite Relay event in order to meet the IOC requirement on gender equity across all sailing events.
Individual Men’s and Women’s Two Person Dinghy events – 470 Class
This event would incorporate the existing Men’s Two Person Dinghy event (470) and replaces the existing Mixed Two Person Dinghy event (470), resulting in separate fleet racing for single sex male and female crews.
Mixed Team Racing event – ILCA 6 Class (previously known as the Laser Radial Class)
Racing in this proposed event would pitch two singlehanded sailors (one male, one female) from each country against each other in a kind of four boat match race. The team with a sailor finishing in last place loses the match. The event would be policed by on-the-water umpires. Sixteen nations would compete with the format comprising a round robin stage, quarter finals, semi finals, petit final for the bronze medal and a grand final for the gold and silver medals.
For reference and context, here are the original 10 sailing events put forward for Paris 2024:
• Men’s Windsurfer – iFoil
• Women’s Windsurfer – iFoil
• Mixed Kite – Formula Kite
• Men’s Dinghy – ILCA 7 (formerly Laser)
• Women’s Dinghy – ILCA 6 (formerly Laser Radial)
• Women’s Two Person Skiff – 49erFX
• Men’s Two Person Skiff – 49er
• Mixed Two Person Dinghy – 470
• Mixed Two Person Multihull – Nacra 17
• Mixed Doubles Offshore – TBD
The IOC recently questioned the viability of the new Mixed Doubles Offshore event and asked World Sailing to come up with an alternative option. Hence the three new possible events which were chosen ahead of the following proposals:
• Mixed Two Person Keelboat – Star
• Mixed Match Racing Four Person Keelboat – TBD
• Mixed Match Racing Two Person Keelboat – Far East 19
• Mixed Match Racing Two Person Keelboat – TBD
• Mixed One Person Keelboat – 2.4m Class
• Mixed One Person Dinghy Slalom Relay – ILCA 6 Class and ILCA 7 Class
• Mixed One Person Dinghy Team – Finn Class and ILCA 6 Class
• Mixed One Person Dinghy Team – Finn Class and Europe Class
• Men’s One Person Dinghy and Women’s One Person Dinghy – Finn Class and Europe Class
• Men’s One Person Dinghy and Women’s Two Person Dinghy – Finn Class and 470 Class
• Open – One Person Dinghy – Finn
• Men’s One Person Dinghy – Finn
Once again for reference, the IOC criteria that all the proposals were judged against are:
1. Align with Olympic Agenda 2020+5, including relevance to the youth, innovation, universality, and participation of the best athletes
2. Keep full gender equality on both number of events and athlete quotas (e.g. alternative mixed-gender events or split of currently approved mixed events into men’s and women’s events)
3. Prioritise universality and maximise the accessibility of the sport
4. Should have been previously tested at the respective World Championships organised by World Sailing
5. Should not cause an increase of the overall cost and complexity for the Paris 2024 Organising Committee, National Olympic Committees and/or National Federations, specifically in the direct comparison with the sailing programme, as a whole, in Tokyo 2020
6. Use of existing venues/Fields of Play
At the 2021 Mid-Year Meeting the Constitution, Events and Equipment Committees will each meet on 10-11 May 2021. They will consider the three approved submissions on and make their respective recommendations to Council.
World Sailing’s Council will then meet on 14 May 2021 to discuss and vote to decide on two alternative event proposals to be put forward to the IOC ranked in order of preference by the IOC deadline of May 26, 2021.