U.S. Olympic Sailing Trials : Star and Soling Leaders Are Under Scrutiny

Rivals in the U.S. Olympic sailing trials are starting to search the shadows for answers why Mark Reynolds is running away with the Star class and John Kostecki is leading the Soling.

Is Reynolds receiving privileged weather information from Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes syndicate?

Do Kostecki and others have illegally light spinnaker sails?

All anyone knew for sure when racing resumed in 8 knots of wind after a two-day layoff Tuesday was that the competition was uncommonly close.

Vince Brun of San Diego won the Star race by eight seconds over ’84 Olympic gold medalist Bill Buchan of Bellevue, Wash., with Howard Shiebler of Oakdale, N.Y. another 36 seconds behind.

Kostecki, of Alameda, finished 14 seconds ahead of his nearest competitors, the Coleman brothers from Newport, R.I.--Gerard, Peter and Paul, who were three seconds in front of Brodie Cobb of Dallas. The Colemans are only three-tenths of a point behind Kostecki, 14.4 to 14.7 in the low-score system.

It was Brun’s crew, Hugo Schreiner, who had raised the issue earlier that Reynolds, a San Diego native, might have won four of the five races before Tuesday because he was getting advance information from Stars & Stripes’ sophisticated forecasting equipment, putting him in position to benefit from wind shifts.

Reynolds and Stars & Stripes officials denied it, and by late Tuesday Schreiner was backing off.

“It was a suspicion that we had,” Schreiner said, “a big suspicion. They say they haven’t, so . . . Dennis (Conner) said if (Reynolds) is getting the information, he’s getting it without Dennis’ knowledge and without Dennis’ approval.”

Still . . . it hadn’t escaped the attention of Schreiner and others that:

--Reynolds’ father Jim works for Stars & Stripes, driving the tender Betsy. Jim crewed for Conner when they won the Star world championship in 1971.

--Reynolds was Conner’s boat attendant at the ’76 Olympics, where Conner won a bronze medal in Tempest.

After watching Reynolds sail into wind shifts day after day, Schreiner brought the matter before Conner.

Tuesday, Jerry LaDow, operations manager for Stars & Stripes, said: “That’s the damnedest thing I ever heard. No is the simple answer. We can give a pretty good forecast of what the day’s weather is going to be, but our more sophisticated weather data is not up yet.”

Reynolds said: “It sounds like a good idea. I should have done that. As long as you get it before you go out on the water, it’s perfectly legal. But it’s not happening.”

Instead, Reynolds said, his system is to “just take compass readings (on the sequence of wind shifts) before the start, like everybody else.”

Another rival, Paul Cayard, said: “I don’t think anything he’s getting (from Stars & Stripes) is the reason why he’s winning. The guy’s sailing a good regatta.”

Reynolds was fifth Tuesday, his worst finish of the series, but for now uses that as a throwout, leaving him with a huge margin over Brun, 5.7 points to 27.4.

Brun, a naturalized citizen from Brazil, said the Star and Soling sailors receive no formal daily weather briefing from event organizers. “I would think a country like the U.S. should have a weather report every morning a little bit better than just looking in the newspaper,” he said.

The Soling spinnaker issue was raised by Craig Healy of Point Richmond, Calif., and Ed Baird, of St. Petersburg, Fla., who filed a protest before Tuesday’s race against Kostecki, third-place Dave Chapin of Newport Beach, Dave Curtis of Marblehead, Mass. and Kevin Mahaney of Bangor, Me.

The claim, written by Healy’s crew Russ Williams, a sailmaker, was that the nylon material in their North spinnakers weighed less than the 38 grams-per-square-meter minimum permitted by class rules--the alleged intent being to gain an edge in San Diego’s notoriously light winds.

“That’s why we got it,” Kostecki said. “We’ve had it on the boat, but we don’t think it’s faster. That’s why we haven’t used it.”

Williams: “We don’t know they’re illegal. We just want to find out. We and the Melges (brothers) and Colemans had noticed there was something going on downwind. We thought something was fishy--that they seemed faster in real light, lumpy stuff.”

Samples were to be cut from the spinnakers to be checked Tuesday night.

Curtis, who made three of the questioned sails in his loft, said, “If they’re wrong, they’re gonna buy my sail for $950.”

Kostecki also was being protested by Chapin for an incident in Tuesday’s race. Results were to be announced this morning.

The dinghy and sailboard trials at Newport, R.I., were postponed because of fog again Tuesday, but the jury reinstated the Tornado race that had been thrown out because of the committee’s misplacement of turning marks Sunday.

In doing so, leader Pete Melvin of Long Beach and third-place Henry Bossett of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., who sailed around the wrong mark, were awarded their average points for the series, leaving Melvin, with his throwout, at 0.00.

The Flying Dutchman race remained thrown out.

In the Finn trials at Marblehead, Mass., Brian Ledbetter of San Diego went from seventh place to pass runner-up Alex Cutler of Madison, Conn., on the final reach and win for the third time in six races.