There’s nothing like a cool breeze on a sweltering day, or during an Olympic sailing regatta.
There was not much of a breeze for long stretches in the early days of these Paris Summer Games, meaning that, nearly every day since the sailing schedule opened, officials had to either postpone or abandon a race.
“That’s a very tough situation (officials are) in over there,” said international race official Peter van Muyden. “The wind drops, but there are some boats in front and then (officials) have to decide to abandon the race. Well, as you can imagine, the boats up front aren’t very happy about that. But the boats in the back are very happy.”
The Summer Olympic sailing is based in the city of Marseille, about 660 kilometres south of Paris. van Muyden, who was speaking from Portsmouth Olympic Harbour in Kingston, Ont., has not sailed from Marseille. Friends at the regatta said the last chance Test Event featured great conditions in early July.
As the events opened this week, not so much. The wind has been either fickle or nonexistent.
Charline Picon, a French women’s skiffs crew member, told Reuters the winds were “quite unstable with … a lot of gusts.”
(Fun fact, when Picon and her crewmate, Sarah Steyaert, returned to shore after claiming bronze, their respective partners got down on one knee and proposed marriage. They both responded with “oui.” At least love is in the air if the wind isn’t.)
The debut of the women’s windsurfing marathon was also abandoned earlier this week after the wind faded an hour into the event. Reuters reported that the race started with a flash, but soon turned into a slow slog “with the windsurfers dropping off the foils and having to ‘pump’ their sails to propel themselves.”
Sounds exhausting.
What is the minimum wind speed for sailing?
There are few sports where the weather plays such an integral role which, van Muyden said, is why there are such strict rules officials must follow.
The minimum requirement for a race to take place is a moving average wind speed of five knots (nine km/h), and the wind should be coming from a consistent direction.
“That’s called a shifty wind,” said van Muyden. “They want a consistent wind because if the wind is not steady in direction, it’ll be very hard to get a good, fair start.
“Once they’ve started the sailors should be able to handle it.”
How often are races postponed or abandoned?
van Muyden admitted that sailing is probably one of the most confusing sports to watch, but what is happening in Marseille isn’t something a spectator should get too fired up about. He said postponing a race is fairly common. In fact, they had to postpone CORK — an international regatta hosted in Kingston — on Friday because there’s also a lack of wind. (Kingston hosted sailing for the 1976 Summer Olympics.)
Postponing an event is the term used when the race hasn’t started yet, and abandoning the race is when it is already underway. The first is identified with a striped, red and white flag (like a candy cane, not the Canadian flag, unfortunately), and the latter is identified using a blue-and-white checkered flag.
van Muyden has run the sailing events for the Canada Summer Games and isn’t a fan of giving start times to organizers – much to their frustration.
“They’ll say, ‘OK, you have your first race at 10 a.m.,’ and I reply ‘No, we have our first race when the conditions are suitable,’” van Muyden explained. “We’re not like basketball or any other sport.”
Waving the blue-and-white checkered flag is less common, and more contentious.
Officials have strict requirements to ensure a level playing field. If a competitor disagrees with a call, they can request a redress, but van Muyden said they’re rarely successful.
To have a decision redressed, a team must prove the race committee made an error, that the team’s result was made significantly worse because of that error and through no fault of their own.
“Most of the time we have pretty good relationships with the athletes, but they work for four years, and sometimes hard decisions are ones they don’t like,” van Muyden said. “It’s just the way it works.”
van Muyden said at a lower level of racing officials usually don’t abandon races as early, but at the Olympic or World Championship stage, they’re strict to follow their guidelines.
What do sailors do when their races are postponed?
Not only does the lack of wind postpone races, but if officials don’t instruct sailors to return to the marina, it also means athletes are left out on the water. This week, some unlucky Olympians were left sweltering in 41 Celsius heat with little shelter on their crafts.
“It was an emotional roller coaster,” Isaac McHardie of New Zealand, which was third entering the medal race for the men’s skiffs called 49ers, told The Associated Press. He noted that he and crewmate Will McKenzie nearly ran out of drinking water and ice while waiting for their race to start.
Besides hydrating so they don’t keel over, there are plenty of things for an athlete to do on the water while waiting for the race to start. van Muyden said some will go through practice drills while others will simply tie up to their coaches’ boats. From there they’ll recap what just occurred or establish a game plan going forward.
“Every sailor is different,” van Muyden said. “Some sailors, if they had a bad race, might not want to talk to their coach for a while, until they’re cooled off a bit. As you can imagine, they’re Olympic athletes, they’re all different personalities, most of them are A-type personalities. They’re driven.”
At the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, sailors wore ice vests to stay cool on the boats. van Muyden said he’d be surprised if they didn’t have them in Marseille as well.
“(35-41 C) would be horrible for the athletes and officials,” van Muyden said.
What are the perfect conditions for sailing?
It’s fair to say sailors have a love-hate relationship with the wind. It’s like having a teammate you can never really rely on, but if your mom said you have to let your little brother play, you let him play. There’s no way around it.
Teams at the national level do their best to work around or be ready for any deficiencies.
“You could spend hours studying the wind,” van Muyden said. “On a clear day with some little clouds in the sky, they’ll want to go on one side of the cloud because there would be more wind there.
“But all the teams (at the Olympics) have wind experts. Before the race the athletes will talk to the expert, to see what they think the wind is going do and from what direction, which is important. … There’s a lot of pressure on those athletes.”
van Muyden said those team experts would have been visiting Marseille months before the event to study the wind patterns.
While a sunny day can produce a lovely sea breeze, van Muyden said a sailor’s perspective of “perfect conditions” can change depending on how much they weigh. If you’re a bigger sailor, the more wind, the better. If you’re a lighter sailor, less wind is preferred.
“(The Olympians) are in fantastic shape but in lighter winds, if you weigh 10 pounds more than somebody else, you induce more drag on your boat,” van Muyden said. “It’s like being on the bicycle. If you want more, and you have the same strength, you have to use more energy (than your competitor) and, of course, the energy here is the wind.”