I think ITBYC, VTC, WTRC and their respective behaviour qualify for my support.
Wow--so, is the club concept that either you agree with us, or you are not supporting us? Is that they way this club is supposed to work? If so that is pretty sad. I support ITBYC. I support the WTRC.
I do suppose you qualify a concept on its merits, for which it stands and for what it does. So yes wow we seem to agree there.
And you want me to sit here and defend a rule I disagree with, that has created a petition against it, that has led to more emails, PM's, and discussion than ANY other rule in ANY other regatta. Sorry, I won't do that unless I fully agree with the rule, or I was part of decision making body for that rule.
You are quite mistaken and i'm sorry when that did not come across. I do not want you to sit and defend a rule you disagree with.
Far from it, all i'm saying is that your arguments, that of the Italian teams you mention that of anybody else having a problem with the rule, is heard. In fact in this whole thread every single post breaths that.
In fact i don't believe we achieve "the" perceived goal with something like WTRC or VTC at all. I believe they work quite contrary to this goal.. as a matter of fact somewhere over the last 10 years the B in ITBYC may have got lost. IMO Luck has it that Italian, German, Australian, Danish, Norwegian to name a view vsk communities have seen great influx of players that are enthusiastic for team racing. Weather this has some foundation in what happened here is hard to define. From getting developers to include a teamracing mode til getting some kind of highly regarded tournament set up one may believe this is so. On the other hand there are vsk communities that have seen no increase in teamracing at all, and some have seen steep declines. I can't say weather petitions,
your arguments will influence decision making.
I only know that this national criteria definitely does 2 things.
First it lowers the hurdle for countries communities that have seen no or little teamracing activity. Ok there is an argument that the higher the level of racing the better its image. I'ld counter with the higher the level the more intimidating it becomes..
Secondly and this is something you'll have a hard time to counter, it forces teams to a localised line up (yes i know citisenship is not by residence.. [may i add till now]) and thus greatly reduces latencies if only between teammembers.
As long as it takes a protest and a full protest hearing or discussion, I consider any team introducing unneeded latencies to be putting a burden on their opponents.
Now it breaks up our team, it hardly broke any other team.. Presuming this national criteria continues to its logical conclusion, i would expect strict nationality by residence sooner then later. For the mentioned reasons i'm willing to put water in my wine, you or nobody else needs to.
Now i don't think that the arguments will change, the WTRC is well on its way.. and coming April i'm sure there will be time to evaluate and see where things go from there, and if and what consequences will follow. Till then please keep your input coming,
i'm sure its considered and well thought of weather pro or contra.