Sailing: In cruise control

There is something very unique about sailing that perhaps sets it apart from all other Olympic disciplines. Effectively speaking, sailing, as it is perceived now, made its Olympic debut at Sydney in the 2000 Games - becoming the first Olympic sport to undergo a name change that is! The sport had always been called yachting till the Sydney Games.

Sailing, or for that matter yachting, has been practised since antiquity as a means of transport. In the modern sense, yachting probably originated in The Netherlands, and the word seems to come from the Dutch 'jaght' or 'jaght schip', probably a light, fast naval craft.

International yacht racing started in 1851 when a syndicate of members of the New York Yacht Club built a 101-foot schooner named America. The yacht was sailed to England where it won a trophy called the Hundred Guineas Cup in a race around the Isle of Wight under the auspices of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The trophy was renamed 'The America's Cup', after the yacht, not after the United States, as is commonly thought.

The trophy remained in the hands of the United States, and specifically New York Yacht Club, until 1983, when an Australian yacht finally broke the American domination.

Frequent changes

Sailing was first contested at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900. It made its next Olympic appearance in 1908, and has featured in every Olympic programme since that year. In the initial years, after the sport was introduced in the Olympics, time handicaps were used to adjudicate the race. The race format and the classes of competing boats have changed frequently since then. Olympic racing is now conducted with boats categorised into one-design classes based on similar weights and measurements.

Unlike most other sports, sailing has had a very varied programme that has kept changing after every few Olympics. This is primarily because of the fact that the popularity of the boats keeps changing over time.

There will be a change in boat type at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games from Soling to Yngling in the fleet/match race Keelboat Open class.

The trend has been to have smaller and smaller boats, with fewer crewmembers. In some of the early Olympics, crews had as many a 10-12 sailors. However, during the 2000 Sydney Games, only one event had a three-person crew (Soling), while lone sailors contested six events.

Women have always been allowed to be a part of Olympic sailing, along with men. However, in the 1984 Los Angeles Games, separate sailing events were introduced exclusively for women. The 2000 Sydney Olympics sailing programme consisted of men's, women's and mixed events.

And no discussion on Olympic sailing can perhaps be completed without a few words on the British sailing team. The British sailors already have had a base in Athens and will be strong contenders at the forthcoming Games. British sailors have won medals at every Games since 1980, and the Sydney Olympics haul of three golds and two silver medals was the best in any British sport. "Of course it's not down to mere luck," said Rod Carr, Olympic sailing team manager from 1984-96 and performance director of the Sydney team, and who is now chief executive of the Royal Yachting Association - British sailing's governing body.

Ainslie and fellow members of the British sailing team were the first members of Team GB to arrive in Athens nearly a month before the opening ceremony.

Sydney Olympics gold medallists Shirley Robertson, Iain Percy and Ben Ainslie are all back now in the team, but in different boats.

Interestingly, Ben Ainslie is perhaps the only British medal hope who has piled on the pounds in pursuit of Olympic glory. Ainslie is only 27 but is seeking his third Olympic medal in Athens after winning a silver in Atlanta and a gold in Sydney.

He has graduated from the Laser class to sail in the Finn, the category won by Britain's Iain Percy in Sydney. In his determination to win a gold at Athens, Ainslie has gained weight to attain that ideal shape. He told Sportinglife recently: "After winning gold in the Laser, I needed to move on. I spent a year with an Americas Cup team and big boats, but that didn't go so well. So I needed to change class and Finn was the obvious one. I didn't quite fit because the body weight's different. So I had to put on 15 kilos, but I'm pretty much there now. It's cost me a fortune in new clothes, but it should be worth it!"

STARS TO WATCH

Ben Ainslie, Britain
Shirley Robertson, Britain
Iain Percy, Britain