Most of us are off the water and counting down the weeks to the start of the new season as the northern hemisphere delivers this season’s offering of short days, long nights and hardcore weather systems that slide across the Atlantic. But for some, the training programme continues as they focus on the road to the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.

Many have headed to warmer locations to train where they often buddy up with some of their arch rivals to compete as if the Games were on in a few weeks. It’s a mark of just how important the summer of 2028 is. But also the importance of how one specific day could play out.

And while the Olympic medal race day is more than two and a half years away, it’s not just their performance that’s important either, the specific details as to how the competition will be run is crucially important. Not only do athletes and coaches need to know how gold, silver and bronze medals will be decided, but they also want to ensure they can maximise their chances of getting to that point.

Understanding the Olympic format may sound obvious but, as I wrote recently, the mooted plans for the next Games looked very different.

For many sailors the proposals put far too great an emphasis on a single short race that would take no account of their performance in the selection series. The worry was that, despite years of training and a string of good results, victory would come down to one extremely short race in an area that could likely have more variable conditions.

And any points buffer they’d built during the series beforehand would be scrubbed in favour of a winner-takes-all single race.

Sailors were so concerned at the little – if any – word from World Sailing as to what was on the table, that they made a fair bit of noise about it leading up to the World Sailing conference. Now it seems, things have changed.

Photo: Mark Lloyd/World Sailing

Following that conference in Dublin significant modifications to the medal races have been made and agreement reached to provide two interesting new formats: one for windsurfing and kites; the other for the dinghy, skiff and multihull classes.

For the windsurfers and kites it looks to be a fairer system than that which existed for the last Games.

After a selection series, the top 10 competitors head into quarter-, semi- and grand finals. In the quarter-final, places 6 to 10 race against each other in a single race with the winning two proceeding to the semi-final to join places 3-5. From this race the winning pair go to the grand-final to race against the top two.

The advantage of this system is that taking the top two from each stage is considered to be better than taking just the winner, as it should both change the tactics and reduce the influence of a lucky win.

In the final with four competitors, the top two start with a win apiece, the other two start on zero. From here the first competitor to achieve two wins takes gold with silver and bronze decided on the number of wins. Under this system it seems more likely the winner will be the dominant/consistent performer in the series.

The format for the sailing classes is a bolder change.

Here, the opening series of 8-9 races seeds the fleet as usual, with the top 10 going through to finals day. The difference is that once the selection series is completed the total points for the top 10 are adjusted (if required), to ensure no competitor is more than 9 points ahead of the next placed competitor. From 4th to 10th position, no competitor can be more than 18 points behind 3rd.

With this compressed points board, all 10 sailors then go into the final (which consists of two single-point races), with a chance of winning a medal. Closing the points gap should mean the racing is more exciting while also allowing a team that has been dominant to maintain a points advantage (the previous idea had been to wipe the scoreboard back to zero ahead of the medal race.)

The new formats will be trialled in a number of the major Olympic classes events this season, the first being the Trofeo Princesa Sofía regatta in Mallorca in late March.

So, while the sailors are relieved that the most important regatta in the world should still rely on a consistent performance, the chances are this coming season will be scrutinised far more than before.

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