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Together We received a couple letters complaining about Tornado sailor and International Tornado Class President Michael Grandfield and his ranking in the class. It seems the main complaint is that Grandfield alledgedly manipulated the system to move up in the US Sailing Team rankings. We don't know what's going on in that class, so we sent some of the complaints to Grandfield and here are the responses. We do know that the 2005 Tornado Class AGM had a vote of no confidence for the president, passed 28 to 7 with 10 abstentions.The comments against him are in bold below. Good times. “The ranking system was set and agreed upon by all competitors in spring of 2005. Rules and regattas were posted on US Sailing's website. You can get all the info there.” US SAILING circulated an email on 2 March 2005 that recommended ‘Miami OCR plus count either of two other regattas, a three regatta system’ and asked sailors to reply ‘with your thoughts’.There was no vote; the scoring system was not included or described. “All other teams went to Houston for the US Nationals, except Grandfeild/Kuschner” This is untrue. The factual record is readily is in readily available. Here are the links (1, 2, 3) to the result sheets: “Realizing that he would not have a chance at the team based on missing the event and the rules that were set, Mr. Grandfield protested the event and the ranking system.”The Article 14 grievance, which challenged the scoring system, was initiated prior to the start of any of the Tornado ranking events. Subsequent to the Article 14 filing, the Olympic Sailing Committee scheduled a discussion on the scoring system in mid-December. “Last minute Grandfeild abused his presidential power and made the North American's two different events so that he could make the team. This looked really bad for the US to all of the foreign competitors.” This is untrue. The factual record is readily is in readily available. Here is the link to the final Notice of Race, which was posted 3 months before the event. Here is the link to the NOR for the 2005 European Championship/Mats Nyberg Trophy, which is virtually identical and which used the same scoring procedure (for the 7th consecutive year). There were no requests to amend the Notice of Race prior to the regatta; no request to amend the Sailing Instructions at the start of the regatta; no filings for redress during the regatta. “Granfield went to the court of arbitration and lost, then kept threatening US Sailing legally until they caved, this was because it was not worth taking funding away from already struggling Olympic Sailors.” This is untrue. These matters are not settled by civil litigation. No court of arbitration heard any part the grievance; nor ruled either in favor of the grievance, or against it. The grievance was mutually resolved between the parties - the Olympic Sailing Committee and me. The US SAILING Review Board never convened a hearing. The only struggling USA Tornado team that was at risk of losing funding was Mike Kuschner and me. Here is a link that shows the USA crews standings in the current ISAF World Ranking list: “… This can not be proven even though we all know it is true.”It is true that it cannot be proven. It is untrue that it is true. Class matters are discussed within the class. I have read Sailing Anarchy’s ‘Terms and Conditions’ page, and I am glad to see that you reserve the right to block or remove material that is determined to be… ‘abusive, defamatory… misleading…’ etc. And that you forbid ‘harassment and content which may… give rise to liability’.The email below is inaccurate and misleading; it is also abusive and defamatory. I would ask that you provide me with the name(s) of the author(s) to give me an opportunity to encourage their careful attention to the truth of the matter. Regards, Mike
Grandfield 04/26/06 |