Results from Racer Survey on ‘Theater Style’ Racing
Dear Sailors and Fans,
The 49er Class held a survey to ask our 49er sailors, the people directly affected by the ‘Theater Style’ Racing initiative, what they thought.
The 5 questions were:
1. Do you think ‘Theatre Style Racing’ would be better for spectators and the media?
2. Would you support a trial of ‘Theatre Style Racing’ for 49ers?
3. Do you think the match race option or the sailorcross option will be better?
4. Should the class decide to trial ‘Theatre Style Racing’, which events should the 49er use? (note, we don’t control all of these events)
Options were: Europeans 2010, Sail for Gold, Extra event – Speed week related after Sail for Gold, Perth 2010, both the extra event and Perth 2010, or None
5. Do you in principle support the 49er class effort to push the envelope of sailing into the media?
The results are in! 41 Sailors responded, which represents about 1/4 of active 49er sailors. We are 100% unanimous on question 5, “do you support class efforts to push the envelope with the media” – YES. Thank you all for your support on this! Class support is the backbone of any initiative so we thank you for keeping the top level goals in mind.
On question 1: Would ‘theater style’ be better for spectators and the media? 37 say yes, 4 say no, 90%.
On question 2: Do you support a trial of ‘Theater style’? 33 say yes, 8 say no, 80%.
On question 4: Where should this trial take place?
4 say Europeans 2010 (sorry, we took too long to roll this out, so this option is no longer possible.
16 (40%) say it should be an extra event right after Sail For Gold 2010
7 (18%) say we should try to do it at Sail For Gold 2010
5 (12%) say we should do an extra event after Sail For Gold 2010 and at Perth 2010
3 (7%) say we should do it at Perth 2010.
And the final question, should we try SailorCross or Match Race,
22 (54%) say SailorCross, 19 (46%) say Match Race style, so basically a tie.
Hopefully more sailors will contribute their thoughts during the AGM at the Europeans next week. The compromise and consensus solution does seem to be to try both, one style at an extra event after sail for gold, and one style at Perth 2010.
Thanks for your participation,
Ben Remocker and Simon Hiscocks, members of the 49er World Council
