​The governing body for sailing is examining how Olympic-class equipment is designed, used, and discarded with the aim of making changes that will lessen the sport’s environmental footprint. Alexandra Rickham, World Sailing’s director of sustainability, described this as a pioneering life cycle assessment project that will provide the evidence needed to guide smarter decisions and help shape the future of Olympic equipment. “Sailing has a natural connection to nature and the environment. It’s often viewed as a clean, green sport powered by the wind,” she noted. “But the reality is that our equipment has an impact. It goes through significant industrial processes.” Rickham added that the insights from this project could benefit not only Olympic sailing but the broader sailing community and potentially other sports as well.
Competitive sailing has been an Olympic discipline since 1900 and features boats propelled solely by wind and waves. In the 2024 Games, one- and two-person crews competed on hulls up to 17 feet (5 meters) long, racing around buoy-marked courses in the Bay of Marseille. Beyond the Olympics, sailors compete year-round in local regattas and larger events. These boats are typically built from carbon fiber, fiberglass, and PVC foam—a combination that requires substantial energy to produce and results in carbon emissions. Moreover, these materials are not readily biodegradable and are difficult to recycle. When elite sailors retire their boats, options include selling, passing them to junior sailors, or sending them for specialized recycling to avoid landfills.
As part of World Sailing’s initiative, the sustainability consultancy Marine Futures is gathering data from boat builders about their operations and surveying athletes about equipment usage: how many boats, sails, masts, and other gear they own, how frequently they replace items, and how they travel with their vessels. The objective, by year-end, is to quantify the environmental impact of a four-year Olympic cycle and identify which World Sailing interventions could yield the greatest benefits, explained Ollie Taylor, director of Marine Futures. Potential interventions include encouraging builders to use reusable materials, redesigning boats, adjusting competition schedules to reduce travel and boat transport, and promoting equipment reuse. Taylor emphasized that the aim is to replace guesswork with robust data to inform every decision.
Michelle Carnevale, president of the environmental nonprofit 11th Hour Racing, praised the project as evidence of meaningful progress in recent years. She noted that sustainability was not a common topic in the sailing world a decade ago, whereas now environmental monitoring and benchmarking could become an integral part of the sport’s rules, a trajectory supported by her organization, which helped sponsor the software used in the project. Walker Ross, a sport ecology expert, highlighted how the initiative reflects a broader shift toward integrating environmental considerations into sport governance and practice. This evolving emphasis aligns with the growing demand from athletes, teams, and governing bodies for transparent, data-driven approaches to reduce the ecological footprint of competitive sailing.