Ireland’s Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove will return to the water in Marseille on Friday (12.13pm Irish time) for the rescheduled Olympic men’s skiff medal race after the first two attempts to run it off were stymied by flukey winds.
It’s the bane of sailors and race management alike that the wind just doesn’t blow to order in most parts of the world.
With Dickson and Waddilove in contention for an Olympic medal, there was widespread frustration afloat and ashore when the race committee started the race in the minimum of breeze. This quickly faded to nothing and the race was abandoned.
Almost two hours later and the race was again started and again, the wind failed to hold and the race was abandoned once more.
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There a vague attempt at a third start, this time on another part of the bay off Marseille, but it was clearly too late in the day so the medal race final is rescheduled for Friday.
So how little is too little and what is fickle and, more importantly is it fair racing?
The 49er skiffs need a minimum of five knots of wind, which is a barely discernible breeze. The problem with this minimum is that it’s too easy for this to drop off again rather than build in strength, which is what sailors and race committee would hope for.
The race attempts for the medal final all had the five-knot minimum and race management waited for it to hold for five minutes before commencing a start sequence or countdown.
On Saturday, the opposite problem is forecast to occur when winds could reach 28-30 knots or Beaufort force 6, which would be too much for the more fragile skiffs but ideal for the single-hander of Finn Lynch.
Apart from wind strength, the other element of flukey conditions is wind direction.
When a race is started, it is based on a particular wind direction that may vary by a couple or degrees, which would be considered stable.
Even frequent wind shifts (of direction) are accepted challenges within the sport and playing these are what gives individuals boats an advantage over others and is part of the test of the athletes’ skill.
But when major changes of direction occur, in the range of 30 or 40 degrees or even more, the standings of a race can be turned upside down, which is when the element of luck in sailing is strongest.
Wind shifts combined with a failing breeze are the worst conditions possible, which is exactly what happened for the medal race attempts.
Sailing can be very unfair at times but at least everyone is subject to equal chance of such unfairness.
But when an Olympic medal is at stake, organisers have a duty to ensure basic fairness to ensure a good outcome. And rather than let the first sailing medals of the Paris 2024 Olympics be decided on a driftathon, they rightly abandoned to try again on a better day.
