Proposal
That the 49er World Championship 2026 schedule 2 races with the top 10 boats for the final day of racing, and to use a multiplier of 2.25 prior to those races, truncated so all scores are rounded to an integer for ease of final day communication. No racing shall be conducted for boats 11-25 on the final day.
Background – The challenge
To remain a valued member of the Olympic community, sailing must find a way to showcase our sport in a way the public can be entertained by the incredible sport we do. The final day of the Olympics for the Boat Events (49er, FX, Nacra 17, ILCA 6, ILCA 7, 470) will attempt to showcase traditional fleet racing. Each Event will have 2 races of the top 10 boats on the final day. That schedule fits neatly into a 1-hour timeslot for TV. Having a fleet of 10 boats instead of 20 at the Olympics or 25 at Worlds allows for normal fleet racing moments to occur, without having too many boats for the public and broadcasters to keep track of.
The challenge is that when we reduce the fleet size, we also reduce what is at stake while using traditional scoring. When opening series races have 20 boats at the Olympics and 25 boats at Worlds, they have double or two and a half times the impact on the scoreboard as races with only 10 boats.
If we weren’t going to showcase our sport for TV, we would finish regattas with 3 races and a full fleet just like normal. As we are reducing the fleet size, we will adopt the principle of equality of race values. Races on the final day should be worth exactly the same as races in the opening series for a couple of reasons.
- The best way to ensure the worthiest champion emerges is to conduct more races and to ensure they are each valued. Having 2 races on the final day instead of one, and having each race be worth the same as the opening series races drive meritocracy in sailing.
- By using this principle to determine regatta outcomes on the final day we aim to distort the regatta as little as possible. A team with a large lead should retain a large lead and regattas that are very close on points should remain very close on points.
Having evaluated a large number of prior 49er and FX World Championship and Olympic results, we have calculated how to ensure the final races are equal in value to the Gold fleet races. At a 49er World Championships, the multiplier for the final day should be 2.25. At the Olympics the multiplier should be 1.5.
The official scoring sentence in the sailing instructions will say, ‘at the conclusion of racing on day 5, the overall scores will be divided by 2.25 and truncated, prior to the start of racing on day 6.’
This means that scoring on day 6 can be single point scoring, and each team will start with scores in round numbers.
A clear example: Imagine Peter Burling is winning a 49er World Championship and is heading into the final day with a 15-point lead. If the organization schedules 3 races with 25 boats, then his lead is large, but could be undone in even a single race. However, if the organization schedules 2 races of only 10 boats, then his lead becomes so large it would be very seldom that there would be any chance of being overtaken. We propose to undo this impact of changing the regatta to suit TV audiences, by adjusting the scoring so that the competitive proposition on the final day races is EXACTLY the same as it would have been had there been no change to the schedule.
Note 1 – we looked to see if there was a difference between how the FX fleet and 49er Fleet performed to see if the multiplier should be different. The results were almost the same 2.24 versus 2.27, so using 2.25 for each fleet is suitable for all. Other fleets, and other regatta structures would likely require different multipliers, but if we stick to the principle of equal race scoring, those multipliers can each be calculated.
Note 2 – if we wish to make our final day more exciting for TV audiences, create more viral moments, and ingratiate ourselves more to sporting fans and the IOC, we can adopt more aggressive final day scoring policies based on the principle of driving audience engagement and having the best sailors perform in critical situations. We are not proposing any of these more aggressive options for the 2026 Worlds. The 2026 Worlds system has meritocracy as it’s only guiding principle. Using this should establish a baseline of best practice prior to any other priorities beyond meritocracy be balanced.
Note 3 – examples of ways the final day racing could be further altered to set up more engaging racing for the public are:
- a policy that the final DAY should be worth the same as a gold fleet day (3 x 25 boat races value in 2 x 10 boat races). In this scenario, we should use the multiplier of 3.4 for a World Championships and 2.3 at the Olympics.
- We can impose maximum point gaps, like has been discussed at the 2025 World Sailing conference of (say) 9 points. On the engagement side, this ensures no team can win gold while finishing last in the first race, but it otherwise an arbitrary intervention into the competition
- We can impose a maximum of (say) 18 points between 3rd an every team, so that we can market that every team has a mathematical chance at a medal, even if that chance is 1 in 10,000. The downside of this is that we distort the performances of the teams from 4th to 10th place, so their performances from the opening series relative to one another are no longer counted fairly.
- Any other reasoning can be thought of, like using rank, day rank, re-ranked races, and more to compress the scoring.
