Sailing

Sailing as a competitive sport was called yachting until the 21st century. The international federation, now World Sailing, changed the sport’s competitive name in an attempt to limit the elitist connotation associated with the term “yachting”. The sport has been termed yachting at the Olympics through 1996 and sailing, in effect, made its Olympic début in 2000 at Sydney.

Yachting actually began as a form of sailing, which has been practiced since antiquity as a means of transport. In the modern sense, yachting probably originated in the Netherlands, and the word seems to come from the Dutch “jacht” (for hunting), which was originally used for fast, light ships.

Sailing as a sport was brought to England by King Charles II about 1660 after his exile to Holland. International yacht racing began in 1851 when a syndicate of members of the New York Yacht Club built a 101-foot schooner named America. The yacht was sailed to England where it won a trophy called the Hundred Guineas Cup in a race around the Isle of Wight under the auspices of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The trophy was renamed The America’s Cup, after the yacht, not after the United States, as is commonly thought.

Sailing has been governed worldwide by the World Sailing (WS), formerly the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU) and International Sailing Federation (ISAF), which was formed on 14 October 1907 in Paris. As of 2020 the WS has 133 member nations.

Sailing was first contested at the 1900 Olympic Games. It made its next Olympic appearance in 1908 and has been on every Olympic Program since that year. Sailing has had a very varied program that is usually changed every few Olympiads as the popularity of various boats waxes and wanes. Women have always been allowed to compete in Olympic sailing with men, and the first woman to compete in the Olympics was a sailor, in 1900. In 1988, separate sailing events exclusively for women were introduced, and as of 2008 only three sailing events allowed mixed crews. In 1984, the popular sport of boardsailing was also added to the Olympic Program, and a separate boardsailing event for women was placed on the program for the first time in 1992.

The current sailing program has events for both men, women, and open crews. The classes fit into certain categories, including a windsurfing class, one-person dinghies, two-person dinghies, two- and three-person keelboats, skiffs, and multihull boats; however, the exact type of boat within these categories may now vary from Olympics to Olympics.

Sailing is contested at the Olympics in a series of fleet races, with points awarded for the placement in each race. In 2008, the so-called Medal Race was added to make the sport more suitable for television: these races featured only the top 10 boats, and took only 30 minutes.