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Race Officials on the Water
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Message from the Chairman
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Dear Race Officials,
Well, I don't know about you, but for me the first four months of 2008 have simply disappeared. I was fortunate enough to be invited down to Australia for a series of Olympic class events in January and decided to take a holiday there for most of February. Since then I have served the Princess Sofia Trophy Regatta out of Palma and the SOF Hyeres in the South of France. It is just staggering how all of these events have developed over recent years. The strength in depth of every fleet is amazing. Virtually all the competitors have coaches and there are few tail end charlies. This of course creates a challenge for all the race officials. As the stakes for the sailors and their professionalism continues to grow, we have to find ways to match their demands. I do not think these developments are solely confined to Olympic classes. I am convinced this will be our major challenge in the next four-year cycle.
In Hyeres, I met informally with some members of the ISAF Athletes Commission. In general they have huge respect for the work we do. However, they do not understand why some things differ between events and between classes, especially in sailing instructions. The differences far exceed the different characteristics of the boats they sail. Somehow, we need to get the classes and the race officials together to work towards consistency where sensible, without removing the use of good judgement when the situation demands.
Some of the good news from all those events is that Addendum Q for medal racing has settled down and little or even no change is anticipated prior to the Olympic Games. Also, the new version of Appendix P (in sailing instruction format) was used universally and it was a pleasure to receive compliments for something that ISAF has done recently!
Meanwhile, back in the 'office' things piled up and it has been time to play catch up. A number of Q&As have been with the panel for some time now and mostly held up by my absence. If that has caused some frustration, I apologize. A number will be finalised very shortly.
You may remember that one of our goals is to move the Race Officials applications from the current paperwork/email system to a centralised web based system. The work on the new ISAF website took longer than anticipated and so the Race Officials system fell behind the original programme. However, significant progress has been made and some race officials due to apply for re-appointment this year will be asked to trial the new system in parallel with the current system. If the trial is successful it will become the standard from 2009 onwards.
I never know how much notice to take of websites and sailing newsletters such as Scuttlebutt, but they do occasionally highlight issues that we need to deal with. Sometimes I feel the need to write in to correct some misreporting, but I never know if that has any real effect. For example, it was reported (not in Scuttlebutt) from the 49er Worlds that the judges penalised a boat under rule 42 while the wind was blowing 25 knots. 'How could they do that!' the reporter exclaimed. Well, we didn't. It was the medal race and the boat was penalised for a port/starboard incident. The fact that the penalty flag was red, and not yellow was totally missed by the observer. I am pleased to say that they promptly published a correction when advised of what really happened. Other recent articles have raised the issue of conflicts of interest. This is an issue that we are working on and plan to bring the fruits of our work to the November conference. It is a thorny subject as we are more often than not dealing with perception rather than reality, but we must tackle the problem none the less.
Finally, if you are thinking that you could contribute to the work of the ISAF, be that in the race officials area or elsewhere, now is the time to start a discussion with your national authority to ensure that you are nominated in good time for your name to be considered by the next Executive. If you would like any information on what may be involved, please do not hesitate to ask.
Enjoy the rest of the Season and I hope to meet up with many of you during the year.
John Doerr
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ISAF Race Management Policies
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