2024 Olympics: US Sailing's radical proposal would eliminate the Finn and 470, add 'Kite Tri

SAN FRANCISCO – Purpose or Objective: In the Rio 2016 Olympics, sailing had ten events, although in reality sailing had one discipline, fleet racing, in ten different boats. The IOC has moved from a sport based program to an event based program and adopted a mantra of, “change or be changed.” The IOC is unlikely to be fooled by creative labelling of sailing’s current events and equipment.US Sailing supports a bold approach that differentiates the ten medal events across as many as seven disciplines in a wide variety of equipment types. New events like the Offshore, Kite and Team events plus a second medal opportunity could really create a surge of new interest in Olympic sailing across the broad spectrum of our sport. Four mixed events will promote gender equality across our sport: from dinghies to foiling catamarans to Team Racing to Offshore Keelboats. –Preamble to the submission from US Sailing to World Sailing proposing the "Olympic Events and Equipment" for 2024.

Even though your Ed. predicted much of this new "bold approach" was coming in a world exclusive article here on Sailing Illustrated last December, the US Sailing submission goes even further than we expected and will take many sailors by surprise, in the USA and otherwise. A chart from the US Sailing submission detailing their proposal....

USA Sailing's three-page submission appears as images in the gallery below, and you can download a PDF of the full submission here.

We look forward to your comments, and no doubt this topic will be reprised soon on our weekly Tuesdays with TFE webcast (watch a replay of this week's show here), with hopefully USSA President Bruce Burton (Detroit, MI) and/or World Sailing's USA Vice President, Gary Jobson (Annapolis, MD) providing insight into all this.