Beijing

Workers clean up blue-green algae from the sea as windsurfers sail behind, at Qingdao, the host city for sailing events at the 2008 Olympic Games, in eastern China's Shandong province Tuesday June 24, 2008. The Qingdao government organized 400 boats and 3000 people to help remove the algae after Olympics organizers ordered a cleanup. Experts say the algae, which has clogged the coastline of the Olympic city, is a result of climate change and recent heavy rains in southern China, according to the Xinhua news agency. (AP Photo/EyePress)

They should be converting that algae into Biodiesel.

that way the keep the waterways clean, create an environmentally friendly fuel, and make money from the Olympics.
all win win

Does the RSX have a weed fin option?

In the early 80s off Toronto (Great Lakes), you could follow the trail of a board in the water for the last 15-20 minutes. And it wasn't algue, more like 3-inch long bacteria...

Any links about Olympic windsurfig? Vids? Anything?

I googled olympic windsurfing and found nada. So they're having it? Windsurfng, I mean.

I noticed it was on Saturday, somewhere in amongst all the other sailing, between 3pm and 9am local time.

-6hrs difference (I think) so perhaps they are sailing at night (I wonder)???

Now there's a t shirt -
"No one pumps like an olympic windsurfer"

> and is totally unrepresentative of the sport we all love

It is true that racing is completely unrepresentative of recreational windsurfing.

Racing has a goal, it requires skills that windsurfers who have never competed (at some level) could never, never relate to and understand.

Recreational windsurfing, that is, going left two miles and back and fro and back and fro in fancy gear (that is often underpowered so that it's easier to hold on to), requires little skills (proof: many many thousands can simply do it). It has no goal, no comparison with others.

This is not to demean mass windsurfing and our sport, it's a great activity. But there is no doubt that my little pro mates with equipment I-go-out-only-in-strong-wind at the local beach here and elsewhere would look like absolute beginners in any serious-level race. In my racing days (olympic and slalom), the non-racers just could understand that their local little reaches were much easier than any racing.

Now, this is not to say that racing should be in Olympics, that I don't know. There are sports where Olympics are representative of the fad of the day, others - not.

About standing around in lesser winds: the only reason that this kind of windsurfing is not representative indeed is that we have all these I'm-too-good-for-the-wind moping types sitting on the side.

In short, I concur with the guy who said it's not representative.

At the moment i'm a part of a Bic Techno (205L with centerboard) windsurfing squad thing here in SA which is the junior division of the RSX sailing. It's a heap different to what i'm used to and i'm finding it quite challenging. Always having to have a 6.8m cammed sail rigged, i've been sailing in 18+ knots and even when there was absolutely no wind at all (as in we moved faster if we dropped the sail and sat on the board to drift). Yeah it's a heaps different and probably not quite as fun as full out planning in big winds with small sails, but its very challenging and would take a heap or skill to do it well. The courses they have are two buoys (spelling) directly upwind/downwind of eachother. This is a very difficult course to navigate and takes a lot of practice using techniques i would have never used just in my normal recreational sailing. So yeah it's different and everything, but incrediably dicfficult course and conditions you have to sail.

Bubs

I say F### it, and you can quote me on that.

BTW if a Chinese person said that, they'd probably be shot for it. I have no idea why they gave the honour of holding the olympics to that country. But then again, they gave it to Germany under Hitler in the 1930s.

Yay for sport! *BUUUURP*

Some of the most popular windsurfing races take place in France. This is due to those clever French working out windsurfers like to do, just like Pierre has done. So instead of putting three marks out for a triangle or two marks out for upwind/downwind, they put two marks out for two reaches and gybes.

Any kind of board can go in the race so you get formula, race boards, slalom, wave or whatever, depending on what gear people have and the wind. People also use their GPSes to measure their speed and tracks. The get hundreds of people competing on a regular basis.

There is a push to have a larger formula board the next Olympic board, something from Starboard. I really doubt the Olympic sailing village will be on the Thames river. I am not sure but I would imaging it would be somewhere like Bournemouth or Brighton.

Clearly when Beijing was awarded the Olympics, sailing was not high on the list of priorities for the selection committee. The London Olympics will be better for sailing than this one.

why not just put fans along the side of the olympic swimming pool!