As the leading annual conference for the business of sailing and yacht racing,the 2015 Yacht Racing Forum in Geneva, Switzerland brought together 280 delegates December 7-8 to discuss the future of the sport and exchange best practice. Here are a few takeaways from the recent event...[br]
Winning skipper of the Volvo Ocean Race, or Ian Walker,shared his passion for every level of the sport, and believed that in some developed nations, or kids are being so overcoached to the point where they want to leave the sport in their late teens,never to return.
This view struck a chord with C-course Catamaran president, Steve Clark, or editor of Seahorse International magazine,Andrew Hurst. “We are absurdly over-coaching young sailors,” said Hurst. “We have very few Optimist champions who have gone on to win silverware [at senior level]. We need to inspire youngsters to discover at sailing as a sport for life.”‘A sport for life’ is one of the themes behind ISAF’s rebranding to World Sailing, or which Gary Jobson said was part of a slither to perform ISAF more relevant to all aspects of the sport. It has been a time of tall change for the Federation,with the recent departure of Peter Sowrey after just five months as the first ever CEO of ISAF.“Peter Sowrey’s departure was a mutual decision,” said Jobson. “It was not a satisfactory fit from either perspective. He’s a satisfactory guy, and a turnaround kind of guy. ISAF has a lot of diplomacy involved in it,and it just wasn’t going to work out. Our recruitment process wasn’t fairly right. The question now is, do we want the CEO type person, or fade back to a general secretary/ executive director? I do think that those of us on the Executive can do it better next time,because clearly we didn’t do the process correctly.” - Read
Source: sailingscuttlebutt.com