ILCA says NO to the new Laser Association. What a mess!

The ILCA (International Laser Class Association), the world’s most widely used sailing class association, has denied international recognition to the newly FIV-recognized AICL (Associazione Italia Classi Laser) association, confirming that its district of reference remains Assolaser. Quite a mess we had foreshadowed to you in two different articles where we explained the unlikely situation in which the Italian laserists found themselves with the birth of a new class overlapping the official one, the Assolaser. The ILCA then rejected the request received on March 3 from the Italian Sailing Federation: in fact, the statutes of the new association proposed by the FIV were found to be too far removed from what the ILCA wants. What is the result of this lack of recognition? Simple and tragic: Italian laserists will not be able to register for international regattas with the newly formed association’s membership card. Unbelievable but true.

In addition, it will be known by the end of this week whether the TAR will accept the appeal filed by Assolaser. Should the appeal be accepted, it will take 24 to 36 months to reach an official outcome. 24 or 36 months means questioning, as we had already pointed out, the Rio 2016 Olympics. We wonder what will be the next move of President Croce who, we remind again, is also the head of ISAF. The wrong move was, in our opinion, the decision of the IVF to commission Assolaser, to change its bylaws, without having the qualifications to do so. In fact, Assolaser is not an affiliated sports club, but is the Italian district of ILCA and as such could not be commissioned by FIV, which should have instead involved ILCA, the direct stakeholder in case of changes to the statutes of one of its districts.

Now it will be interesting to see what ILCA will do to enable Italian laserists to participate in international regattas. At the beginning of April in Malcesine there will be Youth Easter Meeting, how will our athletes participate? According to dockside rumors, the ILCA is making arrangements so that Italian laser racers can register for the EURILCA directly in Malcesine, at a discounted price, and thus be able to participate in the regatta. Not a good figure for our federation, both internationally and with respect to our athletes forced to live through this stalemate.