Nordstream Race
Nordstream Race
Here at WB-Sails, we live and breathe racing. In fact, the loft was founded after we realized that we need better sails for our own campaigns. Since 1975 a lot has been learned and many things have changed, but the principle of hard work – blood, sweat and tears – remains.
Sailing is a sport that relies heavily on equipment. Sure, it’s the athletes that do the hard work on the race course. But if their gear is inferior compared to their competitors’ stuff, it is next to impossible to succeed on the Olympic level.
Six of the current eight Olympic classes are ”single manufacturer one-designs”, in practice monopolies of their rightsholders. Only two classes, the Finn and the 470 are measurement controlled one-designs, open for anyone to build and sell, as long as they comply with the rules.
In part 1, we looked at the two different one-design approaches, single manufacturer one-design SMOD and the measurement controlled MCOD. In this part 2 we look at how the opening of single manufacturer classes could be conducted, with benefits to the sailors in mind.