No medals for US Sailing Team at 2012 Games

Here is a lively series of posts on the recent lack of success of the current Olympic team.

http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/DISCUSSION_C6/Dock_Talk_F5/No_medals_for_US_Sailing_Team_at_2012_Games_P14264/


My take is that we finally got to see the results of Dean Brenner's policy of only funding the winners. It is no mystery that he has barely funded the windsurfer representatives and that US Sailing has put little effort into developing the youth windsurfing or Olympic windsurfing programs. Even if you could argue there was some de-minimus support it does not nearly come up to the support of windsurfing given by China, Israel or  Holland.

If I had to propose a policy it would be to evenly spread around 50% of the funding amongst all of the athletes on a per capita basis and then award the balance of the funding on results. If you wanted something more complicated you could use this for example.

• 1st year after the Olympiad 70% of funding spread per capita 30% to top performers.
• 2nd year after the Olympiad 60% of funding spread per capita 40% to top performers.
• 3rd year after the Olympiad 50% of funding spread per capita 50% to top performers.
• The year of the Olympiad 40% of funding spread per capita 60% to top performers.

I am sure you could tweak this a but and make it more complicated but clearly the idea of only supporting the winners has been a failure. Why not try something with more of a long term focus - something more long term.