As the first major ILCA regattas of 2025 come into sight at the start on the new Olympic cycle, it is worth reflecting what we have achieved recently and our priorities as a class. We had our annual World Council meeting at the end of 2024 in London, attended by World Council members and ILCA staff, with wide ranging discussions across all areas. We emphasized the need to listen and understand what our members want, to be transparent and responsive to their demands and to promote our class.
With ten ILCA builders, we want to continue our OSEPODS strategy (see here to see what OSEPODS is), working with builders to continue to tighten tolerances and improve all aspects of ILCAs. Having equal boats is probably the thing you most cherish about our class and we will continue to protect this. We had a detailed presentation from the Technical and Measurement Committee, covering progress and future plans including our audit program of builders. We discussed potential equipment updates and how we will continue our Post Production Monitoring Program at some major regattas where we collect data on the hulls and equipment being used.
In February the World Council approved the appointment of Santiago Sampaio as Chief Technical Officer, taking over from Chris Tunstall. Congratulation to Santi and many thanks to Chris for his hard work in supporting the builders and his dedication to the class. While he will be continuing to work for the class as a consultant, he certainly leaves us in a much better place.
Andrus Poksi presented an overview of 2024 events followed by the events for 2025 and beyond. 2024 was a very successful year for ILCA championships with attendance at several events at the venue’s limit. Looking forward, the aim is to continue to provide high quality championship events while also working to improve where possible. For 2025 this means working to improve media coverage both because sailors value this but also to better reflect ILCA’s role as the most competitive dinghy class in the world. For 2025 the Senior Men (ILCA 7) and Senior Women (ILCA 6) will sail concurrently at the same venue in China. Longer term, ILCA is investigating tracking technology. For this quad the plan is to adopt a system for OCS detection at Olympic qualifying events and, ultimately at the Olympic Games. If successful ILCA can look toward broader adoption post 2028.
During the meeting we also had a session with Philip Buhl and Sam Whaley who provided input and perspectives from “senior pros” and we are working on including sailor representation on the World Council to ensure meaningful engagement with sailors. Both were keen to see more communications from ILCA to promote the class and we are working on this.
As well as reports from the President, we also had updates on the ILCA office, marketing and finance from Eric Faust, our executive secretary, Maria Henkel and Nick Page. We also had reports from each regional chair and discussed sustainability initiatives.
With two Olympic events – the women’s and men’s single-handed events in ILCA 6s and ILCA 7s – we continue to work closely with World Sailing. They were complimentary of our support of Paris 2024 and we are building on that for LA 2028. As well as marketing our sport, we will work with them on initiatives around diversity, sustainability, and accessibility. Getting as many countries as possible competing for an Olympic place in the ILCA remains a top priority, building on the record 90 countries that competed in our qualifying regattas for Paris 2024.
Many thanks for your support.
ILCA World Council