The Finn class refuses to be discouraged by the results of last month’s World Sailing Conference in Bermuda.
As the International Finn Association Class Secretary Robert Deaves points out . . . until the 2024 Sailing event programme is approved by the IOC the Finn is an Olympic class.
And they have a point . . . The International Olympic Committee has yet to approve the slate of events for Paris 2024 and that is not a forgone conclusion.
There have been suggestions that the Off-shore event should be introduced as a “demonstration event”.
But these have not been used since the 1992 Summer Olympics, alhough the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, did receive permission to run a Wushu martial arts competition in a parallel event.
At the 1900 Paris Games, the 12 demonstration events included: angling, cannon shooting, pigeon racing and kite flying.
The Games in Tokyo 2020 will see five new events: Karate, Skateboarding, Sport Climbing, Surfing and BMX park. Returning to the Games are Baseball and Softball.
In fact while Sailing has been cutting and dicing its existing ten events, other sports have expanded their presence:
Archery adds a mixed team event – Basketball has added a 3-on-3 varient – Cycling gets the new BMX Park event and Madison cycling returns. Fencing adds two events – Judo gets a new six person mixed team event – Shooting adds a mixed team event – Swimming adds two new distance events and a mixed gender event – Table tennis adds a mixed doubles event – Triathlon also adds a mixed team relay event – And in the Games flagship event, Track and Field adds a mixed 4×400 race.
So despite everything we were told by World Sailing about no expansion of events being possible, at least five new events have been added and ten sports have increased their event/competitor numbers in 2020.
So while we await the final decision of the IOC on what we will see on the water at Paris 2024, we are left to lament what might have been.
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