Montag, März 21, 2011

Our Sport: It is about the People

More often I have written about similarities between my two favorite classes of sailing boats. The DN Iceboat and the Moth class. Both are development classes and both have a rich and long standing history. As being a longtime competitor in the DN with nearly 40 years of building boats and racing them behind me, and only a short period in the Moth (only foiling) I am not able to verify what had been discussed in the Moth and being similar in the DN but the other way round I am rather well informed.

Uuuhps, now this blog entry is going to become complicated and starts to become technical. Instead, it should better express my initial thoughts, before writing this one and better not getting into discussions like e.g. max 15 (Moth) or max 20 (DN) races at championships, which I personally find stupid. Better two series with a short break in between and the Worlds or Euro Championship with 7-8 races and after that using the time left for "Cup races" with max 6 races for the competitors who are left to participate. Those will usually also be the ones who do it for the love of the sport and not for the sake of their sponsors nor for the title alone. Bringing the fun back, when the all important thing, the title, had been decided.

Actually I wanted to bring to you the three part CNN Mainsail episodes, lead by two times gold medal winner Shirley Robinson, about the last DN European Championship held in Estonia in March 2011. What you will see is not much about boats racing past a mark but it is about the essence of the sport, the people. For me this was pretty emotional to watch. Take your time. Have some fun and give me your comment.
CNN mainsail.DN one
CNN mainsail.DN two
CNN mainsail.DN three

2 Kommentare:

Anonym hat gesagt…

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
B. Baggins

Gruß
Burkh

Andrew hat gesagt…

Thanks for the links Fred. What a great bunch of people and what a sport. And there was me thinking we'd had a cold winter here in Holland :)