Can anyone explain why Australia doesn't appear to have a men's RSX representative at the Olympics?http://rsx.australiansailingteam.com/
Only the olympic weightlifters were able to carry it to the water and they were required at another venue?
the Australian Windsurf Sailing Team... someone tell me again there is no "i" in team... especially when you have a team of one.
to answer Mobydisc' question... I guess no one could be bother to
a) figure our how you actually buy on those RS:X setup
b) spend that much dough while they could be buying a really cool wave sailing setup for the same money and
c) give up at least 2 years of quality wave sailing in order to train for pumping the board around a triangular course
In my opinion the RS:X highlights how silly a lot of the Olympic sports have become. I had a conversation in a pub the other day were people were surprised when I mentioned that windsurfing was an Olympic sport... they didn't realize that the RS:X class was considered windsurfing. To them windsurfing was that thing were "people attach a sail to their surf board and go out to jumps and stuff".
There was just a grand total of 15 seconds worth of Jessica on channel 7. It showed a howling gail on the course, probably gusting to 5 knots with Jessica feverishly pumping the sail from side to side just to keep bloody moving. The goods news was that she was sitting in second place at the time.
Go Jess!
Just saw some footage of Jessica Crisp - currently coming second. From the brief 30 seconds of footage she is pumping all the way around.
Difference in the answers is that you didn't ask drunks at the pub 
Seriously, donno what people you found at the pub, but my neighbours who don't windsurf all seem to know that windsurfing is mostly on the flat. It's 100% of all inland/river sailing, plus at least 90++% of all those as you drive by the water that simply go on long reaches and have fun.
Inland/river/coastal flat sailing is nearly all of America and Europe, plus what I know of Sydney.
In that sense, Olympics racing seen from afar is much closer to what people have seen of windsurfing than fancy jumping on Hawaii videos.
Just to confirm what "qualify" actually means in the RS:X sense...
Australia DID qualify to send a man to the Olympic games. There is only 35 spots available at the Olympics (1 man from 35 countries) and roughly about 42 or so countries who sent a man to the 2007/08 World Championships to try and qualify for one of those spots.
Steve Allen qualified Australia to be able to send a representative by his results at the 2008 RS:X Worlds in New Zealand however he didn't make the "Australian Sailing Team" qualification standards...
They were, to be Top 10 at the World Championships or Top 3 at any of the five Grade 1 Olympic Regattas around the World during the 2007 season.
Interesting to note that probably around 15 or so of the Olympic reps currently competing in Beijing would not have made the Australian Sailing Team qualification standard...
I think it would've been nice if Australia sent a rep like Mike Lancey or even Steve just so that we could plug the fact we'd sent a full team (qualified a sailor in each class) - and also as a bit of practice for London 2012. Statistics show that nobody in sailing wins a gold medal (maybe apart from Belinda Stowell) in their 'first' Olympics... I'm not even sure if ANYBODY will be sailing the Olympic windsurfing class in 2012 :-/
It is still BS how the RS:X class even started.
The PWA sailors started Formula in 1998 ish to try and get the Olympics into planing sailing which is what 100% or windsurfers aspire to, and lets say 90% (?) of windsurfers actually achieve.
Planing windsurfing in all conditions from 8kn to 35kn.
If the Olympics had Formula, yes they'd have to put it off some days so why not have 30 days set aside for racing not just the 16 (?) of the Games.
But instead they looked for a slightly modernised version of One Design which has given us what...... expensive One Design racing.
Make it Formula and allow a few more entrants and some TV coverage will be realised. Trouble is Olympic windsurfing is so far removed from what we do, and what people want to see, that it will forever remain on the sidelines. We missed our chance big time.
PS I am not knocking the Olympic windsurfers, they are the fittest athletes out there .... they pump for hours on end. I have enormous respect for them, I just think the IOC and sailing associations need to get rid of the pipe smoking tweed jacket wearing fossils they have and replace them with some progressive thinking folk.
Rant over.
> Olympic windsurfing is so far removed from what we do
> and what people want to see
Damn, I invested in reading the rant, so I need at least to understand it now... 
What is it that we do? And what people wanna see what?
"What we do": there are several things we do - waves, freestyle (of 2-3 flavours), "speed", slalom, racing for some, etc.
"People" if you mean laypeople, then I do freestyle and I can assure you if there's 50 people sailing hard and one doing freestyle, people look at freestyle and nothing else. Then there's 2-3 types of freestyle. Freestyle at Olympics? Which? (Windsurfer freestyle was an absolute spectator success when it was a demo in the 1984 Olympics, in San Diego - big crowds. Ditto '83 Championships in Kingston.).
"People wanna see": if people = windsurfer and screw the rest, then I suspect speedsters will wanna see speed sailing in the Olympics. Freestylists at freestyle, and so on.
I also respect racers, not only for pumping, but all skills including strong winds. The average strong wind sailor couldn't do that.
By "what we do" I mean planing.
By "what people want to see" I obviously mean in the context of racing. (IOC is not suddenly going to drop windsurfing as it stands right now and change to freestyle as it comes uder yachting and the IOC wants course racing.)
So....in the context of racing, people wanna see fast n furious action like slalom.... but there is not enough wind in many places, so that leaves Formula, RS:X or an old one design like Mistral or Windsurfer.
The average man on the street would be impressed by Formula planing rather than RS:X .... IMHO
when has any man on any street ever seen any freestyle windsurfing.(or slalom)??? The only place to see it is on dvd or u-tube. The only sailing I've ever seen on TV is 18 ft skiffs .
Pierre, you may hope for freestyle to be an Olympic sport but its unlikely to happen. As Mark says, Olympic windsurfing is by an organisation that controls olympic sailing. So its pretty unlikely they will look at assessing windsurfing skills differently to other sailing classes.
Freestyle is great, especially with an old board and lighter winds. I used to enjoy doing fun things like helicopter tacks, rail rides and so forth. Where I live now I can't have a board longer than 2.5 meters I have no storage space and it has to stay in my van. As time goes on more and more people will be in a similar boat to me as more people live in units.
So for me its about getting going in lighter winds on big fat shortboards and bigger sails. Of course someone like yourself might think thats boring and for newbs, but thats what I like and I like seeing other people blasting too.
For most windsurfers its planing or complaining. There are less bruises too.
I've said it before and I'll say it again
WINDSURFING DOES NOT BELONG IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES!
Doesn't matter if it's free style, formula, long boards or slalom. There is not one discipline which will work in the games so we might as well just get rid of it!
Australia should've had Michael Lancey as our olympic rep he would have blitzed them in the light stuff, he only weighs like 60kgs!!
> hoping for freestyle in Olympics
Never said that, I said that it would attract more attention and crowds. Will never happen (again). (I don't care that much that it does either)
> longboard freestyle
Yes, it is the only one that would work, because of the possible range of wind. Frankly, I was thinking of any type of freestyle, i.e. Bonaire type. No, no hope of this happening.
No, I don't see why people would stop living just to watch plain planing on TV.
> when has any man on any street ever seen any freestyle windsurfing
Funny, they must have, coz at work (north america here) they all know about wavejumping at least, and many have driven by local spots and know very roughly of what I and others do and they like it. Maybe it's here. Everyone knows about looping at least. All those that have shown up for a picnic (?) here and have seen it are taken by it.
They know at least as much as they do about fencing and rowing and pentathlon.
Chris,
You should save these responses to reduce typing in the future. No doubt the same stuff will come up again. If not here then on various other forums.
All I said was that about 10 yrs ago there was an identified need by both the IOC and PWA to change what was going on at the Olympics.
In the end, what we now have is
RS:X. Basically the same speeds and same to watch is the old One Design racing. Just a lot more expensive.
Very few people will start windsurfing, invest thousands in slalom or formula gear to compete at state / national level and then a couple years later decide to invest thousands in RS:X gear in the hope of going to the olympics. . They can invest less in slalom or formula gear and still race.
I don't see why RS:X was chosen when formula had already been developed as an "all wind strength" alternative to One Design?
My analogy:
Lets pretend V8 supercar racing is still OK, but we want to reinvigorate it.
So we say: let's make a new class to replace V8 supercars.
So we test all the cars in the world and eventually decide everyone must use a Lamborghini.
We get the latest Lambo, detune it a bit so it is the same HP / speed / handling as the Commodores and Falcons we had, and make everyone use it. Now everyone pays more for something that looks and performs the same as before.
Nothing has changed really.
Except the newcomers no longer "progress" from a race Commodore (still fast) to the V8 supercar race car with the same performance, as it is a big step up and lots of $$$.
At the same time, the V8 supercar drivers invented a car that is the same price as the previous model, goes a little faster in marginal conditions and is cheaper to run and people may actually want to watch it race as it looks like what they drive.
Many poorer race drivers actually own this model as it is a natural progression from what they learned on.
But they find out they now have to buy a full on race-prepped Lambo to compete so they give up and just race their mates at the local....
Conspiracy theory: why was the IOC and international yacht racing mobs against forumula? The PWA guys saw the need a couple of years earlier, and did all the hard work for them, but the powers that be still wanted a One Design type situation.
Kickbacks?
In bed with the manufacturers?
I dunno.
WE..... the stupid windsurfing public kept pushing the Olympic powers to be for this stupid idea of exciting windsurfing on short boards which start working after 10 knots plus of steady wind. No wonder they are sick to death of us, I dont now why they havent kicked us out, we are the biggest, pig headed bunch of wingers on the water. If you want to be in the Olympics you have to get back to the Windsurer OD or Mistral. From 1976 till 1989 at both Windsurfer and Mistral World Championships you would get 400 sailors and you had to qualify to go. So lets all wake up.
Perhaps windsurfing should be a part of the WINTER Olympics, but not necessaily in the same locale???
Of all the Olympic sports, this one is the most dependent on weather conditions for its very viability. If there's no snow, do they hold the ski slalom? But the Winter Olympics are always held where there's snow, so no probs.
But what if there's no wind? If racers are not planing it's rubbish to watch. Maybe it shoudn't be in the olympics, or it should be held at a more free time and location. How about locating in it Hawaii every time - so what if the organisers have to share with the USA; it would be a better event!
