U.S. Olympic Star and Soling Trials : Reynolds’ Fourth Win Turns Series Into Rout

Mark Reynolds of San Diego is turning the Star class of the U.S. Olympic sailing trials into a rout.

If this was football, Reynolds would be up by five touchdown at the half.

“It’s a little like a Super Bowl,” said Steve Gould, a sailor who is trailing in Reynolds’ wake. “Most of the Super Bowls are blowouts at halftime, and that’s what this is.”

Reynolds won his fourth race of the trials Saturday off Point Loma to open a 37-point lead over his closest rival, Vince Brun of San Diego.

In the only race Reynolds failed to win, he finished third. In the Olympic scoring system of the Olympic trials, the San Diego skipper and his crew, Hal Haenel of Hollywood, have just 5.7 points.

Even Reynolds is beginning to believe he might be sailing in South Korea come September.

“It doesn’t seem like we can do anything wrong,” Reynolds said. “It’s only half over, but I’m a little more comfortable than I was a few days ago. We just need to be consistent now and get some good finishes. We’ve been pretty fortunate. I don’t think we’ll change anything.”

In light winds of 6-7 knots, Reynolds and Haenel sailed up the middle of the first windward leg and at the weather mark held an 11-second lead over Andrew Menkart of Haddonfield, N.J.

From there, they began to pull away. By the time they had completed the course triangle, with three legs to go, their lead had grown to 2 minutes 10 seconds.

“We got that big lead, and it was kind of hard to blow it,” Reynolds said.

At the finish, Reynolds and Haenel were on cruise control, beating Brun by about three minutes.

It appeared that San Diego’s Paul Cayard, the defending Star world champion, finished second. But Cayard and six others were guilty of jumping the gun at the start. They received a 35-point penalty and finished in a tie for last place.

It’s expected that several will protest the ruling. If race officials are upheld, the penalized sailors will be forced to use this race as one of the two that can be discarded at the end of the regatta.

The overall standings in the Soling trials tightened Saturday.

Dave Chapin of Newport Beach won by 16 seconds over Gerard Coleman of Newport, R.I. Defending world champion John Kostecki of San Francisco finished third.

For much of the race, Craig Healy and Ed Baird led. But Chapin caught some wind on the left side of the course on the final leg to win for the second time in the trials.

Kostecki continues to lead the regatta, but his margin over Coleman was reduced to 2.3 points. Chapin is 9.6 points behind the leader.

Both classes will have today and Monday off and resume racing Tuesday. The final race is scheduled for Saturday. One boat in each class will qualify for an Olympic berth.

The Soling fleet was given a general recall when most of the boats crossed the starting line too soon. The recall, as well as shifting wind conditions, cause the races to start 55 minutes late.

Two U.S. Navy ships cut through the middle of the race course, but they caused little if any trouble for the sailors.

An interested spectator during the trials has been America’s Cup skipper Dennis Conner, who has been sailing his Stars & Stripes catamaran around the course checking out who’s leading the races.