Rule 69 Blog

Rule 69 Blog

Sailing's in rude health?

Outlets talking sailing down, ignore an inconvenient truth.

Magnus Wheatley's avatar
Magnus Wheatley
Oct 13, 2025
∙ Paid

It’s always good to start a Monday with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, so here goes: “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” It’s apt for sailing because there’s a nasty self-serving narrative that is being reiterated by a rose-tinted spectacle brigade that all is not right in sailing and that, if you believe them, is a sport on the wane. So vocal has the call become, that it has taken on a self-fulfilling momentum. Talk it down, it goes down, but very little solutions are offered. I would argue opportunity has never been more present in our sport, and when I take the temperature of the racing scene at international level, it is hard to peddle the negativity.

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