Sailing has been one of the Olympic sports since the Games of the I Olympiad, held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. Despite being scheduled in the first Olympic program, the races were canceled due to severe weather conditions. Apart from the 1904 Summer Olympics, sailing has been present in every edition of the Olympic Games.For the scoring system used for sailing events during the Olympics look at: Scoring systems for Sailing at the Summer Olympics A directory page to all Olympic sailors is given at: List of sailors at the Summer Olympics Information about the Sailing at specific Summer Olympics or the used equipment can be found using the table below: Gender – Until 1988, sailing was a gender neutral 'open' sport where male and female sailors competed together. Even in 1900, several women participated at the Olympic sailing regattas. The exception to this is the post-World War II 1948 Olympics where the IOC decided the events should only be open to male sailors. In 1988, the first exclusive women's sailing event was introduced. Sailing was also one of the first sports to introduce a compulsory mixed gender events in 2016 the Mixed Multihull was introduced. Discipline – Most of the Olympic sailing competitions were done in what is called a fleet race format. At some Olympics, however, was also the match race format, or a mixed fleet/match race format. Classes – Over time, different classes of boat featured at the Olympics. Initially, the classes were specified in tons, then later in meters, feet or generic names. For the discontinued classes, the Vintage Yachting Games were introduced in 2008. Medal Tables – Great Britain leads the Olympic sailing medal ranking table.

The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and also known as Beijing 2008, were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events, one event more than those scheduled for the 2004 Summer Olympics. This was the first time China had hosted the Olympic Games, and the third time the Summer Olympic Games had been held in East Asia, following the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. These were also the second Summer Olympic Games to be held in a communist state, the first being the 1980 Summer Olympics in the Soviet Union.