Sport News : Kiteboarding takes wind out of surfers' sails

The International Sailing Federation (ISAF) announced the decision to include men's and women's kiteboarding at the expense of windsurfing over the weekend, describing it as a "fantastic addition" for the 2016 Games.

"Obviously we've got quite a few young sailors in particular who have been campaigning and building a campaign particularly with 2016 in mind and I guess we've been investing via national windsurfing programs," Peter Conde, Yachting Australia's high performance director, told Reuters on Monday.

"Clearly those sailors are pretty devastate d. At least at first (glance) it looks like their dreams have been dashed by this decision.

"I guess it remains to be seen as to whether many of those athletes might want to take a fresh look and embrace kiteboarding as a new discipline. I guess we'd be encouraging them to look at it."

Windsurfing federations have vowed to pressure sailing's global governing body ISAF to re-instate the sport, with Britain's Bryony Shaw, Olympic bronze medalist at Beijing's Games, supporting an online petition.

Britain's Nick Dempsey, who came fourth at Beijing, said on his Facebook account: "That was a big decision and a very sad day for windsurfing.

"My heart goes out to all the aspiring champions and kids with dreams of windsurfing at the Olympics."

HUGE BLOW

British sail ing performance director Luke Derbyshire expressed surprise at the timing of the decision.

"The decision to replace windsurfing with kiteboarding will of course be a huge blow to the windsurfing community, and we're disappointed for all those who are working at the coal face of the RYA's windsurfing programs to deliver activity and British success on the world stage who will be affected most by this decision," he told local media.

"Kiteboarding made a solid case for its Olympic inclusion at the March trials and although a surprise that ISAF has voted it into the Olympic program at this stage, it appears that the Council of ISAF wished to seize the opportunity, rather than wait until 2020," he said.

Yachting New Zealand chief executive Dave Abercrombie suggested there was little hope of the decision being reversed, given past experience.

"If you go to the last ISAF evaluation process when the Elliott 6 (meter) was removed and more recently the Star was removed, both of those organizations jumped up and down but nothing changed, so my gut feeling is it will probably stay as it is," he told local media, referring to the now-defunct sailing categories.

"We have no (kiteboard) racing, as such, in this country, and if we're going to get up to speed at Olympic level, we're going to have to find athletes, evaluate their ability, and get them racing offshore in competitive fleets."