The 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 are the latest Olympic classes to experiment with a new Medal Race format.
The three classes have dropped the standard ten competitor/double point final medal race, and switched to what they refer to as a Medal Series for their upcoming 2025 World Championships in Cagliari from 1 to 7 October.
This follows on from the recent medal formats trialed in the ‘Pilot Final’ for just four of the ten Olympic classes at the Dutch Water Week, Sailing Grand Slam (SGS) event.
That involved a medal series with quarter, semi and a final race, involving adjusted scoring systems to decide the medal positions.
Editor Note: The medal race version described below being used by the skiff classes for their Worlds, does not involve the quarter, semi and a final race version of the Boards, but keeps more competitors involved until the final four boat race.
The 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 have amended their race instruction documents, in what looks like a last minute major hack, to incorporate the new formats.
Maybe World Sailing really is getting worried about sailings long term presence in the Olympics.
The 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships will comprise :
- The Championships will consist of an Opening Series and a Medal Series Race.
- The Opening Series will be divided into a Qualifying Series and a Final Series.
- The Medal Series will consist of a Gold umpired Race and a 4-point Race
This breaks down thus:
The event opens with an Opening Series, comprising of a Qualifier/Final Series, with 9 races over three days, followed by gold/silver fleets with 7 races over two days.
For day 6 the top 25 from the gold fleet move into the Medal Series consisting of a Gold Umpired Race and a 4-point Race.
And this is where we the come to the major changes which are formatted to make the sport more attractive, understandable and exciting for spectators, media and the athletes themselves.
The top 20 from the gold fleet compete in a single ‘Gold Umpired Race’ in which the winner gets 3pts, 2nd 2pts, 3rd 1pt, and 4th and all other competitors get zero points.
The scores after the ‘Gold Umpired Race’ are added to those of the ‘Opening Series’ and the top four move to the ‘4-point Race’ – that is the final race to decide the podium places.
The winner of the very short (target 11 minutes) 4-point Race is awarded 4 points; no other boat scores.
The medals are decided by the ‘accumulated points’ (from Opening Series score and the Gold Umpired Race) plus points from the 4-point Race.
Well there you have it . . . It will be interesting to see how it goes down with the competitors, who presumably have come up with this format, and the on-site audience, and also (importantly for the IOC) the on-line media audience – which is the method that 99% of the overall Olympic audience will using to watch the 2028 Games.
The 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 class Associations have put a big effort into these championships, and have obviously thought this new medal format through to ensure that sailing keeps its place in the Olympic family. Whether this iteration will achieve the desired result has yet to be seen, but it will definitely up the ante!
Organising Authority: Federazione italiana Vela, in conjunction with LNI Cagliari
