You seem to be expecting some form of technological neutrality but whilst its a noble concept, it’s entirely unrealistic and I’m not aware of any Olympic sport that has this when you look closely (with the possible exception of one-design sailing).
Sadly, not even the reality for one-design sailing, at least for normal people. He/she who has the most money to spend on new sails and getting their hull professionally faired to exact tolerances, is the one who’ll go the fastest (all other things being equal). Now, if we’re limiting discussion to Olympic calibre and assume that every boat on the line spent ‘new house’ type $$ to make these optimizations, I suppose you could consider it neutral tech. .
Yep, that’s what I meant. The Lasers in particular (a class I used to race in back in the 90’s) all come from one production run out of the same factory for the Games most of the time. I agree with you with respect to club racing though - I used to replace my sail every season.