Poor Man’s Olympics

If you are a city that would like to bid on hosting a huge sailing event, and the Olympics is a bit more than you want to take on, the Volvo Ocean Race route doesn’t pass by your port, and you are not in the America’s Cup game, it is starting to look like the ISAF Sailing World Championships is the next rung on the ladder.

First run a year before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, the event gained significant prominence in 2003 when hosted by Cadiz, Spain, where 71 nations participated with 993 boats and 1472 sailors, and 450 journalists attended. The four-year cycle for the Worlds has remained, and with it being held in the year prior to the Olympics, the event is widely used for determining which countries and sailors will be attending the Games.

In 2007, all the top Olympic sailors will be in Cascais, Portugal for the ISAF Worlds to be held June 28-July 13. As for the next event in 2011, it appears to be “game on” for the cities hungry for a piece of the pie. Already, Scuttlebutt editors have received bid notifications from a group in Perth, Western Australia and in Kiel, Germany. This event brings significant revenue to the host city, but is hugely expensive to run, and likely can only be done with considerable government funding. When you play on this level, you need public support on your side. So if you haven’t yet announced your intention to bid for the 2011 gig, it’s time to get on your horse, as your Google ranking is already behind two other towns.