Yesterday
What are the focus issues?
In Bermuda, the annual World Sailing Conference continues, with more than four hundred delegates from 68 countries participating.
The official website of the VFPS continues to publish reports of Russian representatives in the committees and subcommittees of World Sailing. We consider it necessary to reprint these reports.
Natalia Chubenko – on the work of the Rules Committee:
– The World Sailing Rules Committee is one of the key “technical” committees of the international federation. Any sport, like any game, cannot exist without the rules that define this game. Sailing is a complex technical sport, which is also constantly changing with the advent of new disciplines, new racing formats, new types of sailing boats.
The rules of sailing are constantly changing, reflecting new trends in sailing. How do these new trends get into the rules? Many experts work on this, sending their Submissions through WS committees and through national federations. In principle, any competitor or member of the national federation, if he believes that the rules need to be improved, can send his proposals to his national federation, which, in turn, can send them to World Sailing in the form of a proposal.
The chairman of the rules committee is always a very important figure in WS. And by unwritten rule, almost always the chairman of the rules committee leads the Olympic jury. The committee is currently chaired by the “great and terrible” John Dorr, a former Finn-class yachtsman, a longtime member of various WS committees. He will also lead the Tokyo Olympic Jury 2020.
But most of the Submissions come from the rules committee itself. During the year, committee members offer the chairman their own suggestions, which are discussed among committee members. And if they are really interesting and necessary, then the committee itself, through its chairman, makes proposals to the WS.
For Submissions to become rules, they must be approved by the rules committee at the World Sailing Annual Conference. The Committee meets only one day and during this time it should consider all proposals received during the year.
This year there were about 140 such offers! It turns out that on average there should be 3 minutes per proposal, despite the fact that some discussions take half an hour. Such a number of proposals cannot be considered in one day, so the committee is preparing for its meeting in a few months.
All proposals after discussion in the committee through electronic means of communication are divided in advance into 4 groups:
– are recommended for acceptance without changes and are voted by the block;
– recommended for adoption with changes, each discussed separately;
– are recommended for rejection, but the idea in any form (possibly in the form of a Case or in the form of a revised Proposal for the next year or the next Olympic cycle) is taken into account, each is discussed separately;
– recommended for rejection without discussion.
As a result, approximately half of the Proposals are individually discussed at the in-person meeting of the committee for the final vote, for the rest (categories 1 and 4), voting is carried out in a block and takes a couple of minutes.
But on some Proposals from groups 2 and 3, heated debate sometimes flares up! For example, on the question of whether to leave the standard Competition Regulation and racing instructions in the Rules book or move them to the WS website, the discussion lasted about 40 minutes. It seems to be a simple question, but it says a lot – if you transfer these documents to an English site, small clubs in non-English speaking countries will be left without translating these documents into their languages. Not every federation is concerned about translating documents from a website, but everyone translates a rule book! English-speaking countries do not pay attention to this question, which is insignificant for them. As a result of the vote, the votes were divided 6 by 6 with one abstention. The good news: Position and GUI will remain in the Rules book, but in a modified format.
What awaits us new in the next book of Rules
– A new definition “Walk the distance” will appear. Before finishing, the yacht will have to start and go the distance. If the yacht has not completed the first two points, she will not be able to finish, even if she crossed the finish line. In the results, the CC will mark such a yacht as DNF;
– It has been added to the definition of “place by a sign” that this is a situation where the yacht does not touch the mark (relevant for boards and kiteboards where it is allowed to touch the mark, but, nevertheless, no one has the right to force them to touch the mark);
– In Rule 2 “Honest Wrestling”, the DSQ option has been removed, only DNE remains (not excluded disqualification);
– All the rules about the justification of the yacht for breaking the rules will be combined into one. The most important and necessary addition – if the yacht has violated the rule due to the actions of another yacht, she will not need to file a protest to prove this and justify herself. The rule will act automatically!
– Another heated discussion flared up by the definition of “sign”. If something is attached to the sign – is it part of it or not? In other words, if a yacht touches this item – will it break the rules? The committee changed the definition so that objects intentionally attached to the mark (except for the anchor end) are part of the mark. How to know "intentionally" or not? The answer is no way. And after a heated debate, the committee decided that at the moment nothing better could be invented. Advice to the riders – do not touch at all if you do not want to prove later that the object has sailed to the sign by accident!
– An important change in the rules regarding hail. If the yacht asks for a place to turn the overshoot, is it possible to shout to the yacht “Turn!”? Or do you even need to shout “You tack” even at domestic competitions in Russia? The Committee adopted a change allowing the required rules to be hailed in any language, provided that all affected yachts understand this hail. In this case, calls in English always follow the rules.
These and many other changes will appear in the new Sailing Rules Book 2021-2024, which will be published on World Sailing next year.
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Tatyana Ermakova – about the working meeting of the panel “Questions and Answers” according to the rules of sailing races:
– A meeting of the World Sailing panel “Questions and Answers” on the rules of sailing races took place. This is a working group, which is appointed by the chairman of the WS judges committee and the WS racing rules committee and consists of experienced international judges, experts in various areas of refereeing – judges of racing committees, protest committees, and empires. If necessary, the panel seeks advice from other WS experts, especially often when questions have a narrow technical focus, or go beyond the scope of the Rules book. All members of this working group, like others in World Sailing, are volunteers.
The Q & A service was created to help judges interpret and apply sailing rules the same way around the world. To date, the panel includes 18 people from different countries, including two Russian judges: Natalya Chubenko and Tatyana Ermakova from Vladivostok.
How the Q & A service works
Questions on the rules go to the World Sailing secretariat, which forwards them to the chair and vice chair of the working group. Most often, a question is edited in such a way that it becomes more universal, more correctly asked, and can approach a number of similar situations. Questions to the Q&A service may be sent by international judges and national federations – WS members.
After the panel gives a ready-made answer, and this may take several months, it is approved by the chairman of the rules committee and the chairman of the judges committee. Then a “question and answer” is sent to all international judges and published on the WS website.
The booklet “Questions and Answers” is constantly updated. It so happens that answers to some questions are given individually without publication. This usually refers to issues leading to rule changes.
Quite often, questions reveal the imperfections in the rules of sailing, which come to the surface in certain situations and attempts to solve them, using the strict language of the rules on the one hand, and trying to maintain justice and common sense, on the other.
The most striking of these issues are referred to the Racing Rules Committee and then become either the reason for the change of a rule, or receive the status of “World Sailing Event” and are included in the Book of Events.
Only in 2019, six questions and answers served as a reason for proposals to amend the Sailing Racing Rules, the next edition of which will be released at the end of 2020 after the Olympic Games and will enter into force on January 1, 2021.
At the panel meeting, the results of the year were summed up, issues of increasing the efficiency of work within the group were discussed. It was decided to change the structure of the Q&A booklet and bring it into line with the Parts and Appendices of the Rules Book for ease of use.
78 Yesterday # 9638
Chief Editor
focusissues
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