..sO wHY nOT oPEN? (EN)
Constitution, By Laws, Rule of Conducts, Deed of Gifts, Bid Forms.
Many and restrictive rules to help us to reach which goal?
The goal is obvious: serious sailing and serious fun.
Many rules are written to manage regattas and championships.
Once upon a time, in Italy, just one crew for each fleet could entry in the National Championship; meanwhile so many fleets were appointed. So you needed to win the Fleet Championship to take part in the Nationals. Only two people each fleet, and today everybody can!
I'm pretty sure that when the National Championship was opened, so many snipe sailors were worried that Fleet Championship had no sense anymore.
Did local regatta die?
Absolutely not!
Now European National Secretaries voted to open European Championships, and complaining sailors are worried because they think there will be no more interest in Qualifying regattas and National Championships, as probably happened when National Championship have been opened. But: why National Championship has been opened?
Probably to have more participants.
Will national-level regattas die?
Probably not, because snipe sailors do races mainly for fun and not only to qualify for a championship.
Only few crews are interested to qualify for a major championship, the majority only wants to have good regattas, possibly in a beautiful location, meet old friends and new people to share the same passion: racing at their best.
The success of a Championship doesn’t depend to its own particular characteristic to be valid as qualifying regatta to more important Championship (involving 3-5 crews), the success of a Championship is granted when it's well organized, in the right period of the season for that specific location, in the right club, with remarkable efforts about sponsorships and media communication.
If you organize a Championship or a qualification-regatta in a ugly and uncomfortable place, or in a bad period, you will reach just two targets for sure: the entries will be only those looking for the qualification and a probably ruinous regatta.
Working in this way, you will force the best crews to participate to a bad regatta, meanwhile most of the other will stay at their homes, so you won't have as many boats as you could on the water and probably you will induce some good snipe sailors to abandon the Class to sail in other Classes, where the main issue is to sail beautiful regattas, with as many crews as possible, without raising anachronistic and artificial barriers, which avoid any young or talented crew to come and screw up some hyper-specialized snipe sailors and some snipe-dinosaurs as well.
Does it sound good? Really? Good for whom? I mean, good for someone out of hyper-specialized and dinosaurs?
During the last years the Country quotas increased.
From the next year ten crews for each country could participate in the Jr. World Championship.
How many countries will need to schedule any kind of qualification-process? Please think about that, and give yourself an honest answer.
And if you'll do that, please stay honest at least with yourself, then think about what's generating this obstinacy about keeping alive, un-useful, unmotivated and clearly self-damaging quotas systems, as well as any other kind of "closing-formula" for international Snipe Regattas!
Shouldn't be better and easier to open Jr. Worlds?
Are really so frightened some snipe sailors about the risk to loose their ranking position?
I mean, so frightened to prefer to keep that risk with the certainty to choke snipe international events and finally the whole Snipe Class growth?
At the last European Champ only two countries (Spain and Italy) filled their quotas.
Qualification processes were practically non-sense, because many qualified crews preferred to stay at home.
What will probably happen if we will OPEN the Europeans?
Maybe there will be some more crews from Italy, Spain and from hosting Country obviously, but it will depend on the chosen location as well!
For all the others Countries nothing will change, they will have just an unedited opportunity (a fundamental one): the opportunity of attracting new crews, crews interested in the possibility to take part to an international event without using one whole racing season (and a bunch of money) to travel around their Country, for a no-sense qualification-process.
Someone suggests to increase quotas. Well, nothing will change for the majority of countries: Spain and Italy will have one or two more crews racing in the European Champs, and all the others will not fill their own available quotas as today BUT we may keep out new crews interested in joining our Class, and we'll race really anemic regattas, as usual in these last years.
Someone says that quotas guarantee high-level championships. Maybe this is true only for Spain. If you want a high level regatta you have to reduce (a lot) the quota of each country.
Others say that nobody will pay SCIRA fees because today quotas are proportional to boat membership. No. Today and tomorrow people will pay fees to take part into regattas. I never found anybody paying SCIRA fees to allow higher quotas in a Championship for his Country.
If you prefer, you could take a look to the participation-numbers in the last years regattas, and you'll see that Spanish Open and World Master Champ (naturally open) had the maximum number of participants, pretty above the European Champ or any International Champ.
Another example: the Italian National Championship and ranking regattas have always been reserved to Italians; we opened them and… surprise surprise: nothing happened.
Sometimes Belgians come to sail a beautiful regatta, this year Tinoco and Diaz raced in the Piada Trophy and National Championship. It was great; it's always an honor having two champions like them sailing in our National Championship.
For many Italian crews it was probably the only chance to see two World Champions, at least close to them waiting for the starting gun or talking at shore!
We have never had many foreign crews in our regattas but some snipe sailors still think that it would be better if Italian Champ were not open.
I think that rules have to be changed when necessary, and this is particularly true when rules stop working well!
Once, European or World Champs were the most important regatta of the year.
Today we have more successful regattas than the Europeans: cheaper and "open"! Because organizing a European or a World Champ is very expensive, especially for Jr World Champ: free lodging for some crews, accomodation for the Board Members and Executive Director, International Measurers…. if you have a small number of crews, even with very high registration fees, a normal Yacht Club will be unable to face that huge amount of costs. Also consider that in all other regattas you can offer dinner and lunch to all competitors, as long as the event lasts, with the money just saved.
Master’s regattas are another issue.
The average age of snipe sailors is pretty high, increasing the master limit from 45 to 50 is not catastrophic but some crews could loose the possibility of taking part (just for some year) in those regattas.
Shouldn’t it be better changing the DoGs, allowing participation in Master Championship to those not yet master? What could happen? How many more crews would be in the last World Master?
Simply give two separate starts: Italian Master Championship is open to non-master and everybody enjoys it!!
My thought is that some rules (quotas, master not open to non-master) don't help us to have the maximum possible participation (in the best scenario), so they have to be changed, asap.
Many and restrictive rules to help us to reach which goal?
The goal is obvious: serious sailing and serious fun.
Many rules are written to manage regattas and championships.
Once upon a time, in Italy, just one crew for each fleet could entry in the National Championship; meanwhile so many fleets were appointed. So you needed to win the Fleet Championship to take part in the Nationals. Only two people each fleet, and today everybody can!
I'm pretty sure that when the National Championship was opened, so many snipe sailors were worried that Fleet Championship had no sense anymore.
Did local regatta die?
Absolutely not!
Now European National Secretaries voted to open European Championships, and complaining sailors are worried because they think there will be no more interest in Qualifying regattas and National Championships, as probably happened when National Championship have been opened. But: why National Championship has been opened?
Probably to have more participants.
Will national-level regattas die?
Probably not, because snipe sailors do races mainly for fun and not only to qualify for a championship.
Only few crews are interested to qualify for a major championship, the majority only wants to have good regattas, possibly in a beautiful location, meet old friends and new people to share the same passion: racing at their best.
The success of a Championship doesn’t depend to its own particular characteristic to be valid as qualifying regatta to more important Championship (involving 3-5 crews), the success of a Championship is granted when it's well organized, in the right period of the season for that specific location, in the right club, with remarkable efforts about sponsorships and media communication.
If you organize a Championship or a qualification-regatta in a ugly and uncomfortable place, or in a bad period, you will reach just two targets for sure: the entries will be only those looking for the qualification and a probably ruinous regatta.
Working in this way, you will force the best crews to participate to a bad regatta, meanwhile most of the other will stay at their homes, so you won't have as many boats as you could on the water and probably you will induce some good snipe sailors to abandon the Class to sail in other Classes, where the main issue is to sail beautiful regattas, with as many crews as possible, without raising anachronistic and artificial barriers, which avoid any young or talented crew to come and screw up some hyper-specialized snipe sailors and some snipe-dinosaurs as well.
Does it sound good? Really? Good for whom? I mean, good for someone out of hyper-specialized and dinosaurs?
During the last years the Country quotas increased.
From the next year ten crews for each country could participate in the Jr. World Championship.
How many countries will need to schedule any kind of qualification-process? Please think about that, and give yourself an honest answer.
And if you'll do that, please stay honest at least with yourself, then think about what's generating this obstinacy about keeping alive, un-useful, unmotivated and clearly self-damaging quotas systems, as well as any other kind of "closing-formula" for international Snipe Regattas!
Shouldn't be better and easier to open Jr. Worlds?
Are really so frightened some snipe sailors about the risk to loose their ranking position?
I mean, so frightened to prefer to keep that risk with the certainty to choke snipe international events and finally the whole Snipe Class growth?
At the last European Champ only two countries (Spain and Italy) filled their quotas.
Qualification processes were practically non-sense, because many qualified crews preferred to stay at home.
What will probably happen if we will OPEN the Europeans?
Maybe there will be some more crews from Italy, Spain and from hosting Country obviously, but it will depend on the chosen location as well!
For all the others Countries nothing will change, they will have just an unedited opportunity (a fundamental one): the opportunity of attracting new crews, crews interested in the possibility to take part to an international event without using one whole racing season (and a bunch of money) to travel around their Country, for a no-sense qualification-process.
Someone suggests to increase quotas. Well, nothing will change for the majority of countries: Spain and Italy will have one or two more crews racing in the European Champs, and all the others will not fill their own available quotas as today BUT we may keep out new crews interested in joining our Class, and we'll race really anemic regattas, as usual in these last years.
Someone says that quotas guarantee high-level championships. Maybe this is true only for Spain. If you want a high level regatta you have to reduce (a lot) the quota of each country.
Others say that nobody will pay SCIRA fees because today quotas are proportional to boat membership. No. Today and tomorrow people will pay fees to take part into regattas. I never found anybody paying SCIRA fees to allow higher quotas in a Championship for his Country.
If you prefer, you could take a look to the participation-numbers in the last years regattas, and you'll see that Spanish Open and World Master Champ (naturally open) had the maximum number of participants, pretty above the European Champ or any International Champ.
Another example: the Italian National Championship and ranking regattas have always been reserved to Italians; we opened them and… surprise surprise: nothing happened.
Sometimes Belgians come to sail a beautiful regatta, this year Tinoco and Diaz raced in the Piada Trophy and National Championship. It was great; it's always an honor having two champions like them sailing in our National Championship.
For many Italian crews it was probably the only chance to see two World Champions, at least close to them waiting for the starting gun or talking at shore!
We have never had many foreign crews in our regattas but some snipe sailors still think that it would be better if Italian Champ were not open.
I think that rules have to be changed when necessary, and this is particularly true when rules stop working well!
Once, European or World Champs were the most important regatta of the year.
Today we have more successful regattas than the Europeans: cheaper and "open"! Because organizing a European or a World Champ is very expensive, especially for Jr World Champ: free lodging for some crews, accomodation for the Board Members and Executive Director, International Measurers…. if you have a small number of crews, even with very high registration fees, a normal Yacht Club will be unable to face that huge amount of costs. Also consider that in all other regattas you can offer dinner and lunch to all competitors, as long as the event lasts, with the money just saved.
Master’s regattas are another issue.
The average age of snipe sailors is pretty high, increasing the master limit from 45 to 50 is not catastrophic but some crews could loose the possibility of taking part (just for some year) in those regattas.
Shouldn’t it be better changing the DoGs, allowing participation in Master Championship to those not yet master? What could happen? How many more crews would be in the last World Master?
Simply give two separate starts: Italian Master Championship is open to non-master and everybody enjoys it!!
My thought is that some rules (quotas, master not open to non-master) don't help us to have the maximum possible participation (in the best scenario), so they have to be changed, asap.
by Andrea Piazza
Seg.Naz. SCIRA Italia
posted by lzp! at 6:48 PM
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