Where next for Women's Olympic Match Racing?

9:44 PM Thu 12 Mar 2009 GMT

'Stephen Park' . ?

This season marks the first year of the new Olympic discipline, Women's Match Racing. The replacement event for the Yngling fleet racing, supporters of match racing said it would attract more women into Olympic competition.

After cancellation of the women's match racing events in the Princess Sofia Trophy in April and the Hyeres Olympic Regatta in the South of France, women's match racing appears to be in disarray. Andy Rice of SailJuice rang up Stephen Park, the RYA's Olympic Manager, to get his perspective on the situation. Here is his assessment:

SailJuice:With the cancellation of women's match racing at Palma and Hyeres, what do you make of the situation?

Park:The World Cup program has not managed to work with the events to make them happen. There are a number of reasons for that:

? They don't have boats that are appropriate for the event.

? The events weren't able to get confirmation from member national authorities (MNAs) that there were going to be 20 entries to those events.

On that basis, the events didn't feel they could take the financial risk of renting SB3s with a special deal that Laser Performance had set up for those events. They'd offered a deal where they'd have two or three events one after the other, then they'd take the boats from event to event. There was a cost involved in that, and the events needed to make sure they had enough money to run it. The cost is not insignificant as you saw from the cost of the entry fee in Miami [US $2500].

The worry is that lots of these things could have - and should have - been thought about well in advance. They decided that match racing was going to be an event in November 2007. It's not just that the Elliott 6Ms aren't suddenly available, they decided in November what the equipment was going to be.

SailJuice:Bearing in mind the offer of boats that Laser Performance were making for Palma and Hyeres which have now been cancelled, one wonders whether the Laser SB3 would be the more practical option at this stage...

Park:Practical? Yes - in the sense that you can buy a boat now and Miami was run in SB3s and they'd had an event prior to the November conference in the Laser SB3s. The boats are available off the shelf, so I suppose in that regard, yes, it's more practical. Whether it's a better boat for the job than the Elliott, I wouldn't like to say.

SailJuice:Although it has some obvious problems at the moment, what sort of optimism do you have for the future of women's match racing in the Olympics?

Park:Well, I don't actually have a great deal of optimism for it in the future as an Olympic discipline. I'm optimistic as to how Great Britain will do in the match racing and I think we should do fairly well. There's been one event so far and we medalled at that event.

Read the full interview by Andy Rice over on SailJuice - www.sailjuice.com/articles/womens-match-racing-problems

by SailJuice

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Where next for Women's Olympic Match Racing?

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