London 2012 day six: Percy, Simpson and Ainslie assured of medals

As British sailors dominate the 470s

470 Men

The 470s held their races out on the Weymouth Bay West course.

Out of the start of their first race, the right paid up the initial beat with Italy's Gabrio Zandonã and Pietro Zucchetti first to the top mark ahead of Argentina's Lucas Calabrese and Juan de la Fuente and China's Weidong Wang and Daokun Deng.

On the run the Aussies pulled up to third with Patience and Bithell in fourth. Up the next beat the Aussies and Brits did well on the left to wriggle ahead of the Argentinians to round second and third behind the Italians. On the reaching leg of the trapezoid course, as the Italians extended in clean air so the Brits, Aussies and Argies jockeyed for second.

The chasing trio closed in on the Italians downwind with New Zealand's Paul Snow-Hansen and Jason Saunders joining the front runners, but the Italians held on and at the finish it was Belcher/Page who came home second ahead of the Argentineans with Patience and Bithell fourth.

In the second race the left paid up the first beat with Greece's Kampo Kampouridis and Efstathios Papadopoulos doing well hitting it hardest, but it was the now familiar site of Britain's Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell who made the best of that side of course to lead around the top mark ahead of the USA's Stuart McNay/Graham Biehl and Japan's Ryunosuke Harada/Yuugo Yoshida, with Australian favourites Mat Belcher/Malcolm Page fourth.

The Brits initially extended down the run but after their uncharacteristically poor day (by their standards) yesterday, the Aussies were on a charge and pulling up to second closing on the Brits rounding the leeward gate just three seconds behind them.

Up the second beat the Brits and Aussies were neck and neck with the Brits just hanging on as the Coster brothers from Holland did well to pull up to fourth place behind the US team.

On the reaching leg the two lead boats extended away from the opposition but coming into the final mark the wily Belcher and Page rolled past Patience and Bithell to take the lead the bullet.

“We were back in our groove in our style today,”said Page. “The speed we had yesterday upwind we certainly didn’t have today, which was a pity. Some of the others were giving it to us upwind, but thankfully our downwind speed was as good as it normally is and that is where we were saving ourselves and keeping ourselves in the game, fighting for the inches when it mattered and thankfully they fell our way at the right time today.”

Belcher added that across the 470 fleet, after the relief of getting out on the water for the first time yesterday when numerous errors were being made across the fleet, today they were getting into their groove. “Today a lot of the fleet settled down and there were a lot less incidents than there were yesterday.”

As to their showing Luke Patience said they approached the day as they had yesterday. Bithell added: “We had two good results, but more importantly we are sailing well, we are sailing fast, we are sailing smart. The first race went a little bit whacky on the first beat. The wind lightened off a little bit and it got very patchy on the right hand side which came in strong – it is the first time it has done that in a while, which the Italian took advantage of.”

Tomorrow the 470s take over from the Finns and Stars on the deep ocean Weymouth Bay South course.

See the race reports on the Finn, Star, 470 Men, 470 Women, 49er, Laser Men, Laser Women, Rick Tomlinson's photo gallery and Carlo Borlenghi's photo gallery.

Results