49208 said:Would you be willing to consider the following:
1. The "youth" that are coming up are usually starting to sail competitivly at age 10 or younger, with coaches etc. So by age 20 they have 10 years or more of sailing under their belts.
2. There is no substitute for time in the boat. Anybody with a 9-5 job is not going to be able to stay as finely tuned to the nuances of Laser sailing as someone that has the time to go sailing whenever they want. This includes boat handling and lots of short course racing such as you get in high school and college.
3. Pulling strings in the Laser ("fine tuning of the rig") is quickly learned either from other sailors or a coach as compared to other boats like the Star (even in that class, Laser and Finn sailors seem to be able to pick up the string pulling quickly and move on to boat handling)
Now that I've made a case for the youth, I think if you look at a lot of regatta results over the past couple of years, you'll find the older sailors ( 35+old ) holding their own in all but the hvy air regattas. Guys like Ed Adams, Augie Diaz and Chris Raab in the US for example are always a threat at a regatta.
While I don't consider Robert Scheidt, Ben Ainsle, Blackburn, Mendleblatt to be "old", I believe they were at least in their mid 20's before they were at the top of their game.
Flying Monkey said:I have never seen the inexperienced youth win out over the skilled older sailors. The youth that are winning are experienced youth.
Many older sailors I've seen only come out to a club race once a week and maybe they go to a regatta or two but aren't really serious about it. .