Sailing Towards Inclusion: A Gender-Conscious Review of Olympic Sailing Classes
This project reviews Olympic sailing classes and boats from a gender perspective, to enable gender-inclusive equipment. By centering female athletes in the evaluation, the project seeks to identify boats that support competitive performance across a wider range of body types, delivering recommendations to guide future equipment upgrade.
Background
Olympic sailing has reached gender parity in athlete representation yet equipment design remains male-centered: most classes are male-adapted boats with only minor rig modifications. This creates a mismatch between boat characteristics and elite female sailors’ physiology, worsened by foiling classes that favor higher body weights.
Project goals / research focus
This project will conduct a gender-conscious review of Olympic sailing classes and market-available boats to inform equipment selection for Brisbane 2032. By placing female athletes at the centre of the design evaluation, the project aims to provide boats that enable competitive performance across a broader range of body types. Through stakeholder engagement, athlete experience analysis, and technical review, the research will identify design adaptations and class selections that enable competitive performance across diverse body profiles.
Supported by the Swedish Sailing Federation, the project will deliver recommendations to World Sailing by November 2026 and complete an equipment upgrade review by 2028 with a publication and dissemination plan.
Advancing gender equality
The outcomes will directly influence Olympic class selection, reduce health risks from forced weight gain, and support more inclusive pathways for female athletes.
Beyond sport, the project advances InspireLab’s mission by challenging legacy design norms and promoting gender-conscious innovation. It sets a benchmark for governance-driven research that combines technical rigor with societal impact, inspiring broader adoption of human-centred design principles in sports and engineering.
Researcher
The project is led by Laura Marimon Giovannetti, PhD in Technology and affiliated researcher at Marine Systems, SCI School, KTH. Her confirmed membership in World Sailing’s Equipment Committee and lead position in the Brisbane 2032 Events Working Group, provide a unique platform to translate research into policy.
