Tamar Steinberg finished sixth and Sharon Kantor eighth in the women's iQFOiL event at the Long Beach Olympic Classes Regatta, leaving Israel without a podium finish at the final Sailing Grand Slam stop of the season. Steinberg advanced one round further than Kantor in Thursday's medal series, but neither reached the four-athlete final that decided the medals on what will be the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic course.
Steinberg had entered the medal series in fourth place, earning a bye straight into the semi-final. A difficult launch off the line cost her the early position she needed to advance, and sixth became her final classification. Kantor arrived in better form, having climbed nine places during the qualifying series to reach eighth and a quarter-final berth, but another compromised start ended her run through the knockout ladder.
Daniela Peleg rounded out the Israeli women's iQFOiL entry in 12th, two places outside the medal-series cut. It was a narrow margin in a fleet that had put Steinberg third and Kantor fifth after the second day of racing. Britain's Emma Wilson, who had led the event from the front throughout, converted that position into the overall win.
The men's iQFOiL campaign fared worse, finishing outside the medal series altogether. Yoav Cohen was the leading Israeli in 21st, with Tomer Vardimon 27th and Olympic champion Tom Reuveny 28th. The week amounted to a development exercise rather than a continuation of Israel's medal record in the class, with the course itself and the afternoon sea breeze offering the most useful takeaways.
Israel also sent two athletes into the women's Formula Kite fleet, where Maya Ashkenazi placed 14th and Gal Zuckerman 15th. Their presence mattered beyond the results: Long Beach brought both Olympic board disciplines together for the first time, with high-speed kiteboards and foiling windsurfers racing side by side off Belmont Shore, on the same waters set to host Olympic sailing in 2028.
The regatta ran from 13 to 16 July and drew more than 100 international competitors across the four iQFOiL and Formula Kite fleets. It was the first of this summer's Los Angeles Olympic-class blocks and the closing round of the 2026 Sailing Grand Slam, giving teams an unusually early look at the Olympic venue two years out from the Games.
For Israel, going without a medal marks a meaningful break in what has otherwise been a strong women's iQFOiL season. The sharper lesson, though, came from the elimination racing itself: in a format where advancement can turn on a single short contest, the opening seconds carry outsized weight. Steinberg and Kantor both had the speed to compete for the podium — Long Beach simply showed how little room the medal series leaves for recovery once the start goes wrong.
