Olympic Logbook. Day nine (part two)

All 2 weeks of the sailing Olympics itBoat maintains «logbook», telling about the main events and achievements of each day.

As a matter of fact, the event discussed in this issue of the logbook is not directly related to the ongoing XXX Olympic Games. But it is certainly directly related to the Olympics in general. What is it about?
It became known that at the end of last week the association of the RS:Xclass (it's an Olympic class of sailing boards, in which Olympic medals are awarded separately for men and women) sued ISAF and the Kiteboarding Association. What was the reason?
As we already wrote, this spring the ISAF Council made several decisions regarding the Olympic program at Rio 2016. The most unexpected decision was removing sailing from Olympic programme and replacing it with kiteboarding. Much was said at the time that this decision was hasty and ill-considered, taken under powerful lobbying pressure. As a result, there was a big push to reinstate kiteboarding in the Olympics and the ISAF has promised to get back to this issue in November this year, when they'll make a final decision. And here we have such an aphrone!
The thing is that during the Olympics a number of IOC (and ISAF) functionaries made some statements which could be interpreted as saying that the final decision on removing the board has been taken. «Since this was clearly a violation of the» water truce, the RS:X Association has responded by filing its application to the High Court in London on August 1. The association also motivated its decision by the fact that windsurfing (and in particular the RS:X class board) is, according to it, «the second class in the world after Laser in terms of size, variety of modifications, transportability and prevalence».
In response, ISAF issued the following statement: ISAF believes that the Council's decision of 5 May 21012 to exclude sailing from the Olympic programme was perfectly legal and within all ISAF procedures. ISAF expected all parties to be sympathetic and patient with the process of a possible review of this decision. The ISAF is extremely disappointed that this process has been abruptly interrupted and now a lot of legal fees will be required. At the same time, in such a situation the ISAF sees no other option but to defend its decision to exclude sailing from the Olympic programme in the High Court.
The Kiteboarding Association has finally stated its opinion: «We feel shocked that an international class bound by the ISAF constitution and its rules and regulations could take legal action against the world's governing body of sailing in general because of a decision made democratically and in full compliance with the ISAF'sdecision making principles.».
What can I say? We stock up on popcorn and wait.
Hopefully there won't be as much of a comedy as the courtroom do regarding the finer points of «the America's Cup» but one thing is clear it's unlikely to be good for sailing and the Olympic movement in general.

Broadcasts of sailing races (though without commentary) can be watched on Sportbox, the schedule of all races and results - on the ISAF website, and a daily report on the performance of the Russian team - on the website VPSF.