After two days of protest hearings against ISAF (represented by Jerome Pels) in front of an international jury (we were represented by US Sailing) the jury had no choice but to abide by the NOR in front of them and exclude us from the event.

Did ISAF Do The Right Thing?

ISAF World Sailing Games - The Story

There has apparently been a fairly major injustice served against F18 sailors Olli and Kelli Jason. Here is what they had to say.

US Sailing argued two points:

That the original NOR published in May 2005 listed the discipline as Open Multihull. He also had proof that when ISAF council voted for the inclusion of a Women's Multihull discipline they did NOT VOTE to change the open to Men's only. This was done either by the organizers or by Jerome behind council's back at a later date.
In November, US Sailing obtained verbal exception to enter a mixed team after finding out of the change in the NOR.

Jerome, in a typical bureaucratic cover your ass way, denied both points and without having any concrete proof in writing the jury had no choice. This is a type of guy who will not answer yes or no to any question, but rather a vague long story as to avoid any countability. In the hearing(s), Jerome was the only one who had the power to do the right thing and make this exception to allow us to continue, but that would have meant admitting to making mistakes. Afterwards, he also had the nerve to attempt an apology by repeating that he did nothing wrong.

Here's the sequence of events for everyone to judge for themselves. To me it's ridiculous that the event and ISAF bares no responsibility.

Based on a preliminary NOR (produced at hearing) in April 2005. US Sailing selected F18 NAs as the qualifying event for the Open Multihull class.
Event was held in August and teams were selected.
Somewhere between October-November, US Sailing learned that the discipline had been changed to Men's Multihull. After not getting replies to emails, Gary approached an ISAF rep while in Singapore and received a verbal exception to enter a mixed team because our qualifier had already been held.
February, US Sailing enters us into the event and receives confirmation of acceptance of teams. The entry forms specified Kelly as being female. Not to mention that she is a registered ISAF sailor.
May 7, we arrive in Austria and register at the event. We go through registration, accreditation with photos.
May 8-9, we are given a boat for practice racing.
May 10, We race two qualifying races. Turns out that morning Gary was handed a slip by ISAF stating that our entry had been denied. Gary spends the day in hearings. When we came off the water we met Gary and filed another protest to reopen our hearing with new evidence.
May 11, our reopen was granted but the petition was denied and we were thrown out of competition.

How the hell did this go this far without the event having to bear any responsibility? We prepared and trained for this event for 8 months and spent thousands of dollars to come here to compete. I just think this should have come up prior to us actually getting on the water and racing.

Sorry if I'm venting. Can't help it.

On another note... we do want to thank everyone who have supported our sailing and training efforts and are sorry this happened.

Thanks to CatSailor for the info.

05/16/06