Olympic Protests | 1

Jumping from a national to a (very) international event only takes one sentence on the computer. For the competitors and all the volunteers it has been a longer road. I wish them all the best! I hope they will have - as the Chinese saying goes- "an interesting time".


I've subscribed to the Olympic RSS feed and one of the first news items I received was the opening of a web page with all Olympic sailing information on official requests, on the water penalties and Olympic PROTESTS.

I visited the page and found already one protest lodged. Unfortunately only the decision is published, not the facts found. It involves a measurement issue with the weights on the RUS Yngling.

Normally this would only be something has to be corrected before the first race. Not something that is protestable before the boat has raced according to the definition. If you consider the practice race as such - then the measurer reports the non compliance to the class rules to the Race Committee, which then has to protest the boat. See RRS 78.3

This protest however, is something more. Protestor is the Jury and it is a protest under rule 69.1 Alligations of Gross Misconduct for a possible gross breach of good manners or sportsmanship.

Is this a bad omen? To start the protests in Qingdao with a rule 69 hearing? I do hope not. I'm at least happy to read that there was no breach of sportsmanship.
A little strange is the notice on the list. It states: No Penalty given. I would have thought that the decision would better be abbreviated with: Protest dismissed.

You can read the conclusion and decision in this page

Also interesting to read, are the many request made by the teams. I detect the hand of a certain coach of the China team in the long list of questions Go for it, Ewan!

Among the official notices is one about the new Tornado Spinnaker. I wonder if that will be the next protest, once that class has sailed?