SAILING OLYMPIC REGATTA : Women Have a Day on Water

The Olympic Games are adding two more women’s sailing classes for 1992, and it seems they have earned them.

Competing with men, women sailors won one class and placed second in another in the three-day Olympic Classes Regatta at Long Beach that ended Sunday.

Pease Glaser of Long Beach, with husband Jay as crew, continued to dominate the Tornado catamarans by winning four of seven races. while J.J. Isler of La Jolla and crew Pam Healy placed second among 26 470 dinghies, and were the first women to finish each race.

Isler, wife of world-class match racer Peter Isler, was second only to Morgan Reeser of Miami, the top-ranked men’s 470 sailor.

Pease Glaser is the first woman to qualify for the U.S. sailing team in an open class. “It doesn’t seem to be a big deal anymore,” she said, “(although) some of the wives tease their husbands when they lose to a woman.”

Brian Ledbetter of San Diego and Scott Steele of Annapolis--two names familiar to past Olympics--won the Finn and men’s sailboard titles, respectively.

Ledbetter was the U.S. representative in ’88. Steele, 33, won a silver medal in ’84.

Steele’s former wife, Kathy, now married to sailor Dave Chapin, won the first five races and coasted to the female sailboard title.

Three veterans won classes with less serious Olympic implications: Carl Eichenlaub, San Diego, in Lightning dinghies; Kim Fletcher, 63, San Diego, in Stars, and Jerry Thompson, 52, Long Beach, in Snipes.

Eichenlaub , who admitted to being “60 and a half,” is the boatwright for U.S. Olympic teams. He normally competes in his keelboat.

“I hadn’t sailed a Lightning in 20 years,” he said.

The 470, Finn and Europe sailors move on to Olympic pre-Trial events at Newport Beach starting Wednesday. The Tornados will be at Marina del Rey.