Sailing: Following a four-month delay, the Wharton report and detailed analysis of the Irish sailing team performance was published this week alongside the detailed Athens Review. The team sailors bear the brunt of the criticism while Irish Sailing Association (ISA) management emerges relatively unscathed by the findings.

The 25-page document was commissioned by the ISA last autumn to take advantage of British-based Wharton Consulting's main review process of the overall Irish Olympic effort.

It should be noted that the ISA were given the opportunity to respond to the final draft of the documents and were able to provide additional submissions on the basis of being Wharton's client. No other contributors, including the athletes, were afforded such a "right of reply", though Wharton Consulting claim that no substantive changes were made to their findings as a result of the ISA input.

Although not all the athletes share every criticism, the main points included: they demonstrated little or no team spirit - some were argumentative, were lacking in cohesion and unwilling to share good practice; some did not wish to be controlled by their team manager, a behaviour which emanated from a basic lack of respect for him; some were unco-operative with all around them, including and sometimes especially the media, who found them wholly unhelpful and unwilling to utilise this rare moment in the spotlight to publicise their sport; in some cases, they were ill-matched as teams within individual boats and should not have been allowed to sail together.

Several points remaining from the Sydney 2000 review remained unresolved, namely: the absence of a bond and respect between sailors and support staff; the issue of team spirit, and the psychological approach to the games as a major team event; the issue of approachability by the media, and a sense of responsibility to the funding agencies.

The report casts doubt on whether these factors will be overcome in the near future and attributes a "range of personal issues", especially among the "old guard who are unused to being centrally managed and who do not take kindly to it", as being partly responsible.

The Irish sailors are compared to their hugely successful British counterparts, who place a premium on team-work and sharing good practice.

These qualities are aspired to by the Irish sailors but are blocked by personality issues.

The under-performance by the athletes is examined, and the report concludes that either the world rankings give a false picture or the sailors are simply unable to deliver their best on demand, such as at an Olympic Games.

The sailors contended that the rankings reflected more on the quantity of ranking events attended rather than quality of competition, and were under severe financial pressure from meeting intense schedules.

In their defence, the report concludes that the ISA's programme had led the sailors into a false sense of security, resulting in the sailors arriving in Athens believing themselves to be better than they actually were.

This section of the report is riddled with amendments made over the draft presented to the ISA that seeks to place responsibility on the shoulders of the athletes.

The report also cautions against irresponsibly raising expectations of funding agencies, sponsors and commercial partners alike.

The gulf between team manager Garrett Connolly and the athletes is included in the report, but no conclusion is reached to determine if the stand-off was merited. In fact the report appears to exonerate Connolly on the basis of his standing with the Sports Council alone, and recommends that he be retained within a new structure to avail of his experience.

Yet the report also states that the athletes' questionnaire found: almost without exception (the attitude of the athletes) is one of disrespect for the performance director, whom they consider to be lacking in technical ability, and ineffective in raising their performance levels over the course of the programme.

He is uniformly marked down as poor or very poor in respect of his professionalism, his availability, his knowledge/experience, his communication and his effectiveness.

"I'm not focused on the negatives," Connolly responded yesterday. "The report probably suffers from an inability to analyse sporting performance."

He confirmed that he agrees with Wharton's criticism of the sailors.

Several sailors contacted The Irish Times yesterday in response to the report. Veteran Mark Mansfield, speaking for the squad, said: "It begs the question, why is it that our Olympic sailors can regularly achieve top 10 results at the highest level Olympic class World Championships, where we control everything ourselves, yet at Olympics, where we are more controlled, the team results have been dis-improving and dis-appointing."