Athens - morning briefing

A round-up of what lies in store for us today at the Olympics

Day three of the Olympic Games will see seven Olympic disciplines racing. The Mistral windsurfing classes are having a rest day while the 49er will be making their Athens debut.

Among the 49ers Sydney silver medallist Simon Hiscocks and Chris Draper have won a string of medals at European and World championships, including a gold medal at the 2003 World Championships, which they won with two races to spare. They go into the competition as favourites alongside the Spanish pairing of Iker Martinez and Xavier Fernandez who won this year's World Championships. Also to be watched are Chris Nicholson and Gary Boyd of Australia and Marcus Baur and Max Groy of Germany. (See 49er sailor Andy Rice's preview of the 49er racing).

The 49er class is the only class to have three races each day - 16 races in total as opposed to the normal 11 - and from that they will have two discards. The 49er class, like the Mistral has alternate rest days and race days and their final day of competition is on Thursday, 26 August.

For the Finn class it will be the third day of racing. Ben Ainslie will be attempting to repeat his two bullets from yesterday to make up from his devasting disqualification in the second race on Saturday. Ainslie is believed to be considering an appeal against this DSQ based on video evidence of the port-starboard incident with French sailor Guillaume Florent.

After day two Ainslie is up to eighth place overall, but Poland's Mateusz Kusznierewicz is on song and will be hard to catch. The change in conditions yesterday from the light sea breeze to the more vicious Meltemi seemed to benefit some sailors including Ireland's David Burrows who scored a third in the second race and Germany's Michael Fellman, while others such as the highly rated Croatian Karlo Kuret and local hero Emilios Papathanasiou suffered.

In the Yngling, Shirley Robertson sailed a blinder yesterday also scoring two bullets with her crew Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb and currently hold the most commanding lead of all the classes. Again some of the crews, most notably the French and Dutch teams, who did well in the lighter conditions on Saturday appeared to suffer yesterday in the Meltemi where the wind strength peaked at 25 knots for the second race.

In the 470 men, the Ukrainians were showing exceptional speed yesterday until their rudder breakage, but team GBR's Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield sailed safely enough posting a ninth and fourth place to maintain their lead four points ahead of the French duo Gildas Philippe and Nicolas le Berre. Class favourites Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page from Australia, like Ben Ainslie are clawing their way back up the fleet following a disqualification on the first day.

The Women's 470 class sees Greek favourites Sofia Bekatorou and Emilia Tsoulfa holding a one point lead over the Danish duo Susanne and Michaela Ward, their 1-2-2 scoreline in the first three races being tarnished by a 13th place in the final race yesterday.

In the Europe class, Norwegian multiple world champion Siren Sundby is leading the class as expected, but Argentian Serena Amato, the bronze medallist from Sydney is showing remarkable form holding a close second despite only returning to the Europe at the beginning of 2003. Team GBR's Laura Baldwin professes she doesn't like the strong conditions and currently lies 18th in the 24 boat fleet. Meanwhile the highly experienced Dutch sailor Carolijn Brouwer is having a shocker following a 19th place in the first race yesterday followed by a DSQ in the second.

The Laser class has a surprise leader after its first day of racing in Austrian sailor Andreas Geritzer, currently ranked 14th in the world. He is currently on five points ahead of class supremo Robert Scheidt on 11, while the only other sailor to score single figure results yesterday was Belgium's Philippe Bergmans. A third place for team GBR's hope Paul Goodison in the second race yesterday has left him tied in fifth with the USA Mark Mendleblatt and Portugal's top medal prospect Gustavo Lima.

An overnight development came in the Mistral men’s class where yesterday's first race was thrown out after one of the competitors protested the fleet for sailing the wrong course. The race committee finished the race before the fleet had competed the final leg of the course which meant that the whole fleet had failed to sail the correct course, therefore the race was discarded and will have to re-sailed later on in the week.

Racing today is scheduled to get underway at 13:00 local time and the weather forecast is for a NNEerly Meltemi with winds expeected to reach 26 knots providing another exciting day on the water.

Readers in the UK can view the sailing on the BBC Interactive 4. This is scheduled to start at 13:00 (BST) from the Finn course (although they've started earlier than the scheduled time over the weekend). BBC 1 will also include live coverage of the Finns at 15:30 (BST).