'Greenhorns sailing in Qingdao - 2008 Training Camp Qingdao China June 2008' - Australian Sailing Team

No this image hasn't been photoshopped, this is what it looked like as the Australian Sailing Team trained for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Seems that someone forgot to mow the lawn!

From Sail-World by Laura Baldwin

240 boats try and remove sea-weed from the Qingdao Olympic course area

Australia's 470 Coach, Victor Kovalenko shared these photos and insight from the current training camp in China.

'As you can see we have one more problem in Qingdao apart of light wind and strong current, it is seaweed. The local government has employed 240 fishing boats to clean Qingdao bay and they are working really hard but... Sailing is almost impossible now!'

Other days the fog has been so thick that a GPS has been needed to find the way back to shore.

470 stars Nathan Wilmot & Malcolm Page probably didn't think they would be sailing in conditions like these when they named their boat 'Dead Calm!'

How could the IOC let this happen to our sport...???

That's what happens when a sport is sold off to the highest bidding city!

Surely the ISAF must've checked out and OKed the sailing venue........

So what happened with that???

Glad they have swing centerboards, or is the skippers wife sending a reminder?

I think I would prefer to swim in the Brisbane river rather than swim in that bay. But I guess with no wind there prolly won't be many capsizes.

I can imagine that would absolutely STINK...

Shit I have lost my boat once after too much rum ( bastard crew took it home) but sailing my green boat in that would spin me out!

Unfortunately ISAF had to put up with what was handed to them to some extent by the selection of China / Beijing as a venue. It was always known that this was going to be a horrorshow of a location (no to little wind and strong tides) but I think its even worse than everyone realised (except maybe the team managers who had done the research and tried to point it out). Why not Hong Kong where there is some wind and its more visible - who knows but this has all the makings of a disaster regatta (or should I say a disaster crap shoot).

Well i think its a Great idea having all that grass on the race track!

Now it will be easy to compare the excitement of Laser sailing to Grass Growing!

Front page of News.com.au!

Nice to see sailing get some mainstream attention.

What is LSD's coverage of the Olympic sailing gonna be like OG? Any chance of inside goss?

I hear that blokart match racing will be the new olympic class

The green olympics got a mention on A Current Affair tonight. Very short and they showed some US 470 crew on the edge of the water rigging.

If I were sailing there, I'd paint my boat green, and get green sails... That way, you could just sneak through the traffic completely camouflaged!