> Keep Windsurfing as an Olympic Discipline

You may have heard that recently the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) has confirmed the event and equipment selection for the 2016 Olympics in Rio and voted that Kitesurfing should replace Windsurfing as a Men and Women's Olympic discipline. The house believes that removing Windsurfing from the Olympics is a very bad outcome and one that is a result of poor decision making and probably complacency on the part of those who should be championing windsurfing in these circles. Our beef is not with Kitesurfing at all (or removing Kitesurfing from the Olympics) but instead to vote windsurfing back in. It is still possible to achieve this but it requires us all to take action.

Reasons why Windsurfing should be voted back in to the Olympics

• There is the option to have medals for both Kitesurfing and Windsurfing in the Olympics.
• Windsurfing at the Olympic level encourages youth to compete at the highest level and encourages investment in windsurfing from the bottom up.
• Olympic windsurfing receives massive mainstream media attention, which would be extremely hard to achieve should the sport be removed from the Olympics.
• If windsurfing is removed entirely as an Olympic discipline this will result in the removal of funding for various initiatives to encourage the youth to get in to windsurfing. These clubs (e.g. Team 15) are a great source of fresh talent in UK and worldwide windsurfing and not only train the kids up to be potential Olympic champions but encourage a life in windsurfing that may lead them to end up as world class slalom sailors, wave sailors or freestylers.

In addition to this, all the training, hard work, dedication and aspirations of those talented individuals who have trained so hard will be wasted. Close to our heart is Connor Bainbridge (Bigsalty Team Rider) who is one such individual who was promising to be a future Olympic champion.

What you can do

You will have an opinion one way or another but we'd encourage you to do the following. Read through some of the following links to get yourself informed. We would like to encourage you to use the banner link above (embedded in this text) to visit the page where you can make your vote to reverse this decision count. Please also explain the situation to your friends and family and explain the gravity of this situation and make them vote! WIndsurfing is underground, but it's best that it's not subterranean.

• ISAF Selects Kiteboarding for Rio 2016
• Contact ISAF Here
• Sign the petition here
• Additional reading about problems that occurred during the voting process
• Further discussion on the voting issue