Sailing/Yachting is an Olympic sport starting from the Games of the 1st Olympiad (1896 Olympics in Athens, Greece). With the exception of 1904 and the canceled 1916 Summer Olympics, sailing has always been included on the Olympic schedule. The Sailing program of 1972 consisted of a total of six sailing classes (disciplines). For each class seven races were scheduled from 29 August 1972 to 8 September 1972 of the coast of Kiel-Schilksee in the Bay of Kiel. Kiel hosted the Olympic sailing competitions for the second time, having previously done so during the 1936 Summer Olympics. The sailing was done on the triangular type Olympic courses.

Venue

According to the IOC statutes the contests in all sport disciplines must be held either in, or as close as possible to the city which the IOC has chosen. Among others, an exception is made for the Olympic yachting events, which customarily must be staged on the open sea. On account of this principle, immediately after it became known that the city of Munich had the intention of hosting the Games of the XXth Olympiad, the cities of Kiel and Lübeck competed for the honor to carry out the Olympic yachting regattas.

Kiel-Schilksee (Olympiazentrum) When Kiel (and the Kieler Yacht-Club) won the competition the following was decided: a yachting center would be built in Kiel/Schilksee that, as was the case with the sport facilities in Munich, must be usable after the period of the Olympic Games as a future sports center; the city of Kiel will conduct a building competition for the Olympic Center in Kiel-Schilksee as soon as possible; the OC will form a committee for the Olympic yachting events to coordinate all contingencies arising in Kiel, and will in addition create a corresponding full-time organization of the OC in Kiel in order to handle the necessary work and activities in Kiel on schedule. During the Games the number of spectators and visitors at the Olympic events in Kiel and at the Olympic Center in Kiel-Schilksee exceeded the expectations by a large margin. Conservative estimates put the total number at about a million spectators and visitors in Kiel.

Course areas A total of three race areas were set in the Firth of Kiel of the coast of Kiel/Schilksee. The location points to the center of the 2 nm radius circle for course area A & B and to a 1.5 nm radius circle for course area C.

Competition

Overview ContinentsCountriesClassesBoatsMaleFemale 4 42 6 152 323 0

Continents Asia Oceania Europe Americas

Countries

Classes (equipment) Class Type Event Sailors Trapeze Mainsail Jib/Genoa Spinnaker First OG Olympics so far Finn Dinghy 1 0 + – – 1952 6 Flying Dutchman Dinghy 2 1 + + + 1960 4 Tempest Keelboat 2 1 + + + 1972 1 Star Keelboat 2 0 + + – 1932 9 Soling Keelboat 3 0 + + + 1972 1 Dragon Keelboat 3 0 + + + 1948 7

Race schedule  ● Opening ceremony ● Event competitions  ● Event finals  ● Closing ceremony Date AugustSeptember26thSat27thSun28thMon29thTue30thWed31stThu1stFri2ndSat3rdSun4thMon5thTue6thWed7thThu8thFri9thSat10thSun11thMon Sailing (planning) ● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●SparedaySpareday● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●SparedaySpareday Total gold medals 6 Sailing (actual)● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●● ● ●SparedaySpareday● ● ●● ● ●● ●● ●Fog● ● ●● ● ● Total gold medals 6 Ceremonies ● ●

Medal summary

1972: Finn  France (FRA)Serge Maury  Greece (GRE)Ilias Hatzipavlis  Soviet Union (URS)Viktor Potapov

1972: Flying Dutchman  Great Britain (GBR)Rodney PattissonChristopher Davies  France (FRA)Yves PajotMarc Pajot  West Germany (FRG)Ulli LiborPeter Naumann

1972: Tempest  Soviet Union (URS)Valentin MankinVitali Dyrdyra  Great Britain (GBR)Alan WarrenDavid Hunt  United States (USA)Glen FosterPeter Dean

1972: Star  Australia (AUS)David ForbesJohn Anderson  Sweden (SWE)Pelle PettersonStellan Westerdahl  West Germany (FRG)Wilhelm KuhweideKarsten Meyer

1972: Soling  United States (USA)Harry MelgesWilliam AllenWilliam Bentsen  Sweden (SWE)Stig WennerströmBo KnapeStefan Krook  Canada (CAN)David MillerPaul CôtéJohn Ekels

1972: Dragon  Australia (AUS)John CuneoThomas AndersonJohn Shaw  East Germany (GDR)Paul BorowskiKarl-Heinz ThunKonrad Weichert  United States (USA)Donald CohanCharles HorterJohn Marshall

Medal table

Notes

Munich Because of the distance to Munich and the fact that no sailing was scheduled for 6 and 7 September, the killings of 11 Israeli athletes had less impact on sailing than it had on the other events in Munich. Only a few of the sailing teams did not start at the last day of the races, among them the Israelian Flying Dutchman team of Yair Michaeli and Izchak Nir.

Other information

Sailing This Olympic sailing event was gender independent, but turned out to be a Men-only event. This was one of the triggers to create gender specific events. This however had to wait until 1988. Some sources state the Finn event as a designated men-only event. The Official report of the games does not mention this gender specific discriminator, It was the first Olympic sailing contest where only "One Design" classes were used. Also none of the classes was "owned by one builder". In general more than one builder was allowed. (The boats had to apply to what we now call open standards). Paul Elvstrøm was trying to win his fifth gold medal. However, he left the games prematurely. Assumed is that the media pressure became too high at that moment. Paul took revenge by sailing two times more at the Olympics (1984 and 1988) in the Tornado. One of Paul's crewmembers from the Soling took the gold later. Valdemar Bandolowski together with 1972 Dragon helmsman Poul Richard Høj Jensen won the Gold in the Soling class in 1976 and 1980. Although favourable wind conditions in September were predicted. Some of the races suffered from lack of wind. In the Soling and Dragon only 6 races could be completed and the 6th race in the Finn only three contenders were able to finish in time.

Sailors During the sailing regattas at the 1972 Summer Olympics among others the following persons were competing in the various classes: Royalties , Prince of Thailand, Prinz Bhanubanda Bira in the Tempest , King of Norway, Crownprince Harald in the Soling , King of Spain, Sar Juan Carlos de Borbon in the Dragon Sportmanagers , Past President International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge in the Finn , Past president International Sailing Federation, Peter Tallberg in the Soling First non American winner of the America's Cup , John Bertrand in the Finn

Further reading

References

Sources