Tornado have started

OK then I will say watch your blood pressure. I passed no comment, only re posted somebodies post here from another forum.

Now I will pass comment.

All credit given to the USA and other teams for the hard work they have put in.

In MY OWN OPINION it is not the Sail Design or Material I question. It is the exclusive agreement that has so called been signed. If this is the case I find it un sportsmanlike.

If you wish to play the game this way you develop it late enough to not give any other teams an oportunity to use this material. Not ban other teams from using it.

I also think the same way about the new GBR mast.

Just my opinion.

I think it is the timing of this exclusive R&D that is annoying some people. However, it is also a gamble for sailors who use something a little new and different. If none of the three boats using the new sails win medals in the Olympics, it will be a non-issue. If they do, it will probably be an issue forever, because it provides a good excuse for the losers.

It doesn't sound to me as though they have done anything illegal or unethical.

I don't know whether there are any restrictions about track shoes, but if I were a track star, I know I would be trying to design a faster shoe -- just for me.

I got some good advice once, always try to breathe trough your nose when a discussion get heated. (It's quite hard to raise your voice or yell then..)

Rhody: I'm not saying anything bad about the US team. I'm not even "marginalizeing" their accomplishment. Norway dont have a Tornado team in this olympics, so I'm pretty neutral with regards to who wins!

If you re-read my post, you will hopefully see that I _agree_ with you regarding the sails. The sails are within the rules, and I dont have any gripes with them. Hence the comment about watching the blood pressure.

Jake got it right, 'everybody' tought it was alternative 1 based on the information available at the time. It seems like it was alternative 2 instead, and that is of course OK.

Now, the other comments you obviously seem to read some "marginalizeing" in, is my views on class building and has nothing to do with the olympics.

You are mis-reading both my post and intentions. I care for the T-class, and not so much about this olympics.

Please watch your blood pressure..

Stephen:
The rules doesn't say anything about the construction of sails besides permitted sail materials. Everybody has used panelled construction so far, probably due to cost.
The US team and partners appears to have developed and costed a mould for moulded T sails, and agreed with the sailmaker that these sails are for exclusive use by the partners in this olympic.

This is OK in my opinion.
Doesn't Roman Hagara have a sailmaker working exclusively for him with panelled sails ? I dont quite see the difference between the moulded sails and Hagara's approach. It boils down to the flying shape of the sail in the end (as Bill Roberts said).
Moulded sails have some advantages, like weight, crimp, airflow and shape. But the technology for making them is not new or exclusive, so all teams could have done this if they tought of it and had the budget.
The only new thing might be moulding with pentex fibres, but I dont know if that is a new technology ?

The real issue, is indeed exclusiveness, like the RYA masts. And I believe that the only way to stop this is tighter tolerances in the rules.

Rolf

Rolf,

I feel that you have hit the nail on the dead with the above post.

It is not out of class what has been done. Just clever sailors looking (and have the found it or not) for an extra little bit.

To the doubters above, IBM would not openly advertise and sell to its competitors would they ?

The 3 teams that have co-operated have taken a risk by getting new technology sails measured - If they are slow, hard luck. Ditto the 'RYA' mast, use the technolohy to its best.

If the T is to become a one design boat, it needs rules to that effect and in the process you end up with a restricted class that does not evolve…..

Some strict one designs (like the laser) work fine. But with something like the T, some crew preferences are catered for by the measurement (Box) rule – Bendy masts for light crews and stiff ones for the fat(er) boys being a classic example.

The leading edge (of ‘normal’) normal cat development is not a cheap place to be

Good Morning all,

I have to amend a mistake ,.....as of Tuesday, there are 7 points between the top 6 boats ( instead of 5 boats)

....looks like a tremendous battle lies ahead,....any boat can 'do it'!

A little info please, on the Sweden team, is 'Kristin' a gal?

regards and enjoy your day,

Bruce

USVI

.

>>It seems that the Tornado folks to easily consider this class a single manufacturer one design - but is a box rule, and although a bit more strict, very similar to the newer F18 class.

Isn't that the truth. as a matter of fact the tornado has never been anything else than that. Small hull shape differences existed in the past between Reg White, sailcraft and mastrom tornado's as well.

Moreso the switching of places in the tornado class during events seems to indicate that sail skill is still by far the most important factor. Look where Bundy is right now. It is all about who is peaking during the week of racing and who peaked to soon or to late.

How much more equal do you want to get it ?

Wouter

Hi Rolf,

The only issue I have also is about the exclusiveness of material too.

Nothing against the US team, I wish them the best off luck as long as they don't beat AUS

If you can do it and get away with it you will and I would too. But some loopholes also should be closed.

At the end of the day whats done is done and lets get on with racing. I think what is happening with the Masts are more damaging than the Sails.

Saw the footage last night from Bravo (VCR working again! ) and we had about 12 minutes of Race 5 coverage. Can you imagine the frustration on the Americans after a bad start, fighting back a little, and then your dousing line repeatedly gets wrapped on the onboard camera and the leeward mark! They had to manually stuff their spinnaker for the rest of that race and race 6 (in the snuffer). Ouch. This is a close battle and Bundock looked strong.

Hey Jake, et. al. -

Anybody else notice the way the "new" sails sound and look? Instead of sounding "crispy" like new sails I'm used to hearing, these new sails almost sound "crunchy." Could be the quality of the sound equipment on the boats, though the timbre of voices sounds normal... something different about the sound of the sails, though. It also seemed to me that the tack of the jib was all crunched down like they had a bunch of jib downhaul on, but it didn't seem all that breezy.

I liked Jobson's comment - he said he'd like to see the Tornado race the 49er! Me too!

Steve - AUS looked really strong with a 1 and a 2!

Sure, the 49ers are very cool and very fast. Now that the Tornados have spinnakers, I doubt it would be much of a race, though.

Does anyone know what kind of suit Ogletree is wearing in the picture John posted? I think Kevin Burnham in the 470 was wearing the same thing. Looks like the thing for us fair guys....Dan

In the light stuff the 49er might still win - just. In any sort of wind the T would be lapping the 49er

I'm pretty sure those are just oversized wet suit rash guards...the concept is to reduce windage by covering everything with it.

Bruce: "Kristin" is supposed to be "Kristian", and he is about 1,90 meters tall. He has a great sense of humour, so you could probably avoid an black eye if you called him feminine

Btw: He goes by the outname "krille" among friends..

In response to Rolf

(A lot of what I wrote came from Charlie's after dinner speech at GBCC.)

Yes, they are using Cuben( I added it to my spell checker). Cuben is more of a process than a fiber. They take a woven material, compact it or modify the weave and then laminate one or both sides. They make fabrics from many types and combinations of materials, Kevlar, spectra, carbon, Dacron, etc.

I heard about a Cuben Dacron fabric as an industrial balloon/inflatable material a while back, but I never thought about it for sails.

I have looked at Cuben fibre a couple of times in the past. In the same weight as normal sail cloth, Cuben is much more durable. in a 20% lighter version, it should be at least as durable as dacron/pentex. My only experience was cuben spectra for a club racing jib. For 40% more money we got about 3 times the life. It's expensive but, it doesn't blow out, in fact the spectra version doesn't give at all until it just disintegrates.

Carl:
I always believed that Cuben was a special fibre/cloth, and not something you could make from polyester. All literature I have seen on the subject, Cuben sails, speaks about Cuben fibre and carbon as far as i can remember.
Thanks for sharing that piece of information..

Now, do you know more about the exclusiveness of the agreement ? Is it the use of the mould, or is it the process of making Cuben from polyester that is exclusive ?

Hopefully, the ITA magazine "Fly Tornado" will give us the whole story in a while..

Rolf

Rolf,
No offense intended, just clarification.

I have seen pleanty of good women cat sailors,, but never on Olympic level Tornado

Hey Rolf, I came close to the Eastern Norway boarder, in January 2002, I was studying at Mid-Sweden U, at Ostersund, and we went to see a frozen waterfall and ice-house, pretty cool.

Once again, no offense to anyone, ok?

regards,

Bruce
USVI

Incorrect

Paul Elvestrom sailed with his daughter - Trine (I think)

I know at least three women who did Olympic campaigns on Tornadoes as skippers -- one in Canada and two in the U.S. Pease Glaser did two campaigns, I believe, and ranked pretty consistently in the top 5 on the U.S. Tornado team.

Paul Elvstrom raced a Tornado in one Olympics with his daughter as crew, and they narrowly missed out on the bronze medal.

The women skipper on the T-Boat was Melodie Gummer from Kigston, Ont, CAN.

Bruce: No problem, I was making a joke, and Kristian would also just laugh about this kind of typo..

Darren Bundock was sailing with his girlfriend, Alexandra (Alex) Goltz, when they won the open german championship 2003. They beat both Gaebler/Struckman (the german olympic team) and Polgar/Landenberger. I guess they would have made a strong team in the olympics as well.. The only problem would be that Alex is german while Bundock is an ozzie

Rolf

Wow,

I remember seeing her on her mint green Sailcraft Tboat back when I was a kid sailing with my Dad...boat name was "Peppermint Catty".

Mike.

Sounds like there were some tough conditions today in Athens. John and Charlie slipped to 2nd overall, but are still a few points ahead of AUS.

Hope that they can wrap up the series with more pictures like this one!

But it was Brazilian Torben Grael who won in the Star class and with a race to spare. Quite a feat, considering the competitors.

He is now the only sailor to win 5 Olympic medals ever.

If his brother (and Tornado silver medalist) Lars wouldn´t have lost his legs, Brazil wouldn´t be last in Tornado today .

what do you mean "lost his legs"?

Any of these just about cover it

Following is an updated schedule for the final two Olympic sailing shows. This was by e-mail from Gary Jobson:

Thursday, August 26 - midnight on the Bravo network
Saturday, August 28 - 4:00pm on CNBC

Olympic Regatta: Lovell/Ogletree Assured of Gold or Silver

ATHENS, GREECE (August 26, 2004) - The USA's Tornado sailors John Lovell(New Orleans, La.) and Charlie Ogletree (Houston, Texas/Columbia, N.C.)secured themselves at least a silver medal today when they won the first of two races and followed up with a second-place finish. With one race to go on Saturday, Aug. 28, they are now in second overall, only three points behind the Austrians, who are the only ones that could keep the USA from gold on Saturday.

"We won the start in the first race and got a good jump on the fleet immediately," said Lovell, who led at every mark of the course. "In the second race, we did the same thing but started consolidating--covering the guys we needed to cover, in particular Austria and Argentina--and finished second.

"Saturday it's one big race for gold," continued Lovell, who counts the Austrians as one of the fastest Tornado teams in the world. "It's not going to be easy. Today they were in tenth and we thought 'we've got them!," but then, in both races, they grinded back."

Lovell said the Tornado reserve day tomorrow would be spent taking the entire boat apart and putting it back together again, to ensure that no mechanical breakdowns will foil their plans. They also will study the scores and go over all the different race scenarios that could happen. As match-racing champions (they won last year's International Catamaran Challenge Trophy), Lovell and Ogletree are ready for the one-on-one racing with Austria that might present itself.

"We have a much better drop race than the Austrians, so we have two choices," said Lovell. "We jump on them early and drive them to the back of the fleet or just go out and win. We'll make that decision on game day."

There's more about it in the net then I thought. Anyway, a drunk idiot "driving" a motorboat run over him and the legs could not be saved.

Now for the other side of the story on Thursday's racing:

Australia’s Tornado crew Darren Bundock and John Forbes sailed a brilliant race to lead around all marks and win race ten at the Olympics by 57 seconds today.

But … a 12th in race nine – the first race of the day - cost them their shot at winning either gold or silver medals in the last race of the series on Saturday. Bronze is now the only currency within their reach.

Both races were sailed in a light south-easterly sea breeze of 7-10 knots for race nine, 6-8 knots for race 10. The left-hand side of the course paid dividends with more pressure in both races.

However, the right did pay for a while on the second beat of race nine. Bundock/Forbes dropped from ninth on this leg while the Austrians, Roman Hagara/Hans Peter Steinacher, who rounded the bottom mark tenth, went right and rounded the second windward mark in third place.

Hagara/Steinacher finished second to the Americans John Lovell/Charlie Ogletree, who led around all marks, to lead the series with 33 points from Lovell/Ogletree 36, with the world champion Santiago Lange/Carlos Espinola third on 45 after placing 4-3 today.

Bundock/Forbes are another five points behind; equal on 50 with an old Australian adversary, Mitch Booth, now sailing for the Netherlands, crewed by Herb Dercksen.

The win in race 10, built on a good start towards the pin followed by a long starboard tack all the way left, set up the Australians’ race 10 win.

So what went wrong in race nine? Darren Bundock explained: ‘We did exactly what we did in the second race, nothing different.

‘On the second upwind, everyone was racked up and we just took a little dig out for a couple of hundred metres, then went left. And the Austrian, who was behind us, went hard right and was third to the top mark.

‘In the second race, we got a good start and headed further left than anyone. The Americans were below us and asked if they could tack.

‘We said sure and then they tacked and went across below us. We just went going a bit further.

‘Once you get in front it’s easy, you just cruise around all day. Back in 12th, it is not so easy.

‘I guess it’s now all out for the bronze medal.’