It is an aquatic sport, where the main objective is to control a boat that is propelled exclusively by the wind and through the sail.

Navigation of the sail has been practiced for millennia, however, competitive variations of sails had its origins in the XIX century. The debut of this sport in the Olympic Games Was in the year 1900, in Paris.

Each event is divided in a series of boat races, and the points are attributed according to the arrival position of the boats: the winner of each race wins a point, the second wins two and so on.

The final race is called Medal Race, and in it only compete the top 10 and the points value are doubled. Contrary to most of the competitions, the winner is the one with the lowest obtained score.

In the competition the boats sail all the way to the finish line, following a triangular shaped route, where the adversities of the wind in three directions are confronted and they go through signal buoys a number of times, following a predetermined order.