on the water
RACING NEWS Event planning / Race Officials
O
Successful online Race Officials Conference
ver 300 delegates joined us for the virtual RYA Race Officials Conference in
January. The event attracted a number of international attendees, including from Hong Kong, the US and Canada. Held over four nights, the conference had the theme ‘Creating a better racing experience’ and began with a welcome from the RYA Race Officials Committee Chairs. This was followed by a keynote address from RYA Director of Racing Ian Walker on the racing department’s work on ‘re-energising sailboat racing’. Each evening included
talks and breakout sessions covering a range of topics, including remote protest hearings and how to encourage female engagement. One of the key attractions of
the conference each year is the update on changes to the racing rules of sailing. This year John Doerr, outgoing World Sailing Racing Rules Committee Chair, gave an overview of the changes, followed by breakout sessions covering equipment rules, race management, and judging and umpiring. Other sessions included
‘Reaching the Heady Heights of International Officialdom’ featuring four outgoing chairs of the World Sailing race officials’ sub-committees giving their advice on how best to move up through the ranks.
Each Covid-safe race improves the measures in place for future events.
63
Safe racing during the pandemic
Event-planning advice from our Racing Department W
hether it’s fleet, match or team racing, running an event has become more challenging under
Covid-19. In many ways, events proceed as before: entry needs to be completed, staff and volunteers run the racing, and sailors travel to the venue from elsewhere. But our experiences over the last year have shown what changes need to be made.
Communication with competitors
is vital, so everyone is aware of the guidelines, and a thorough risk assessment (written down and published for everyone’s reference) will enable you to answer questions around avoiding virus transmission between people and via shared equipment. RYA advice is to mitigate a possible lack of social distancing on board by avoiding being face-to-face, but we also chose to make face coverings mandatory during races last year. We also decided to base sailors on the shore rather than the water, and gave them separate waiting areas. For most events we usually have three members on the Race Committee boat and two umpires in each rib, but we agreed to reduce the number on the Committee Boat to two and the umpires agreed to operate on their own. We’ve
worked out accurate schedules to ensure sailors and officials don’t mix, and when it comes to scheduling races we’ve split teams into groups to minimise changeovers and mingling time. And to keep the boats and other equipment clean we invested in biodegradeable disinfectant which was kept in spray bottles on all boats and RIBs. There have been some silver linings
to all this. The use of video and social media to brief competitors allows events to start earlier as briefings can be posted the night before. And switching certain events to a one-day format has attracted more sailors – it means the events are cheaper to enter, and costs for accommodation and food are reduced. We hope this has inspired others
to think about how they can review the risks and come up with their own solutions. While it won’t be easy going forward, it certainly won’t be as hard. The paperwork created for event one becomes the template for event two, and the lessons learned from each event make the next one even better. Flexibility in adapting to changing guidelines is key. But very quickly you get to a stage where competitors know what to expect from the ‘new normal’.
Photo: Stephen Dorey / Alamy Stock Photo
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
