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After Marseille mostly delivered marginal light winds for the Paris 2024 Olympics, French sailors shared on social media for how this was predictable, and to question why other more reliable venues were not chosen.
For double Olympic gold medalist Rodney Pattisson (GBR), it was all too much to watch as the conditions contributed to racing against the jury, and not with the wind:
Watching the Medal race for the ICLA 7 Class, I now an ancient gold medal winner was quite shocked and amazed at the first aborted attempt and then the eventual final Gold Medal Race for the Men’s Dinghy event.
From the start, with barely 5 knots of wind strength (the minimum permitted), it became a roll-your-boat contest watched but poorly and unfairly policed by a Jury boat. So poor in fact, that shortly before this race was abandoned, through lack of wind, one competitor managed to capsize his boat whilst gybing in the impossibly light conditions.
However, after the restart, worse still then followed, as the British boat was immediately penalized for using too much rudder movement at the Race Committee boat. Thereafter, the jury watched this particular boat like a hawk for the rest of the race, and ordered numerous additional penalty turns.
In fact, elsewhere the race was a yo-yo, tacking and gybing, rocking and rolling, pumping and ouching by all those competing, but amazingly this was ignored for the main part by the Jury boat who continued to focus their attention on victimizing still further the British boat.
Hardly surprising that after such treatment, this boat finished last in this Gold Medal Race. This was blatant UNFAIR treatment and surely an insult to the Sport and the rule as we know it. World Sailing and the International Olympic Committee must take responsibility for this and ensure that such a farce never happens again.
Event details – Results – Notice Board
Medal Count (G-S-B) – 10 of 10 events completed
Netherlands: 2-0-2
Austria: 2-0-0
Italy: 2-0-0
Australia: 1-1-0
Israel: 1-1-0
Great Britain: 1-0-1
Spain: 1-0-0
France: 0-1-1
New Zealand: 0-1-1
Sweden: 0-1-1
Argentina: 0-1-0
Cyprus: 0-1-0
Denmark: 0-1-0
Japan: 0-1-0
Slovenia: 0-1-0
Norway: 0-0-1
Peru: 0-0-1
Singapore: 0-0-1
USA: 0-0-1
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