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

As British sailors dominate the 470s

470 Women

The 470s were also racing on the Weymouth Bay West course, immediately east of Portland Harbour's breakwater.

On the first beat, it was the Dutch double World Champions Lisa Westerhof/Lobke Berkhout, New Zealand's Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie and Italy's Giulia Conti and Giovanna Micol who made the best of it, but by the top mark the Dutch had pulled out a slight lead, rounding ahead of Denmark's Henriette Koch/Lene Sommer and Israel's Gil Cohen/Vered Buskila.

On the reaching leg of the trapezoidal course, the Kiwis pulled up to second ahead of the Danes as the Dutch extended. Down the run the front two edged ahead of the chasing pack with Croats Enia Ninčević and Romana Župan up to third at the gate, subsequently overhauled on the next beat by the Israelis.

The Dutch finished first 52 seconds ahead of the Kiwis, in turn a minute ahead of Cohen/Buskila with Britain's Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark pulling back to sixth.

In the second race there was a general recall and as they got away for a second time, it was the turn of the British to get off to the best start, rounding the top mark ahead of the USA's Amanda Clark and Sarah Lihan with Argentina's Maria Fernanda Sesto and Consuelo Monsegur thid.

On the reach Germany's Kathrin Kadelbach and Friederike Belcher (wife of Mat) pulled up to second ahead of the Americans. The Brits extended delightfully down the run and up the next beat with the German team firmly holding second and this is how the front trio remained for the rest of the race Japan's Ai Kondo and Wakako Tabata taking fourth.

After almost a week of waiting around the Brits, who lead after day one, were relieved, to put it mildly, to have started. How did they survive the wait? "Hannah and I have managed it really well with the help of listening to past experience of people," said Clark. "Iain [Percy] in Athens and in Beijing was the second week so we have gone to them and asked them the questions about what can make the difference and we have lived by that this last 10 days.

"We saved quite a lot of menial tasks to do in these last days, boat work stuff, just to fill the time, stuff that needed to be done and we could have done weeks ago, but we saved it to do these few days so that we would have distractions. On the water side we saved some short course boat handling side of things, short little exercises to go where you can see and improvement quickly so we saved those up for this last week."

Olympic nerves may have affected the Brits first start, however their priority for the first day was not to do anything stupid. But in the first race... "immediately we went and crashed into the pin end," said Mills. "So we did something stupid, but it almost helped us in a way. You do your 360 and you get on with your race and you can’t afford to be nervous after that. You have to make a good comeback and we did that really well, so we were happy."

In race two Clark said they won out of the blocks. "We had an awesome start. We knew where the line was and there was a bit more space at that pin end. We had really good speed off the line and the fleet were really pressing hard to go into the left and Hannah and I tacked out a bit earlier to have our own lane and it wasn’t as strong a left track as everyone was thinking it would be and we gained quite a lot of distance on that."

The race two win was immediate vindication for the British team. "It was an awesome feeling," said Clark. "I didn’t win a race in Beijing and winning a race at the Olympics Games is a pretty big deal but in context we have 11 races..."

For Mills leading overall was merely a bonus."We wanted to get an average-good first day and not do anything stupid result-wise and we have done that. It doens’t matter who leads on day one - we are not fussed if it is fifth, six or first."

Amazonian Dutch crew Lobke Berkhout said: "It was really nice to start with a win in the first race. You have to start a regatta in a good place.

"Then in the second race we didn't have too good a start and we had to tack away and then we struggled to get to the top of the fleet again, but in the end we had a good catch up back to 9th. So I’m not too happy about the second one but it was pretty tricky, wind up and down and wind shifts. We happy we didn’t lose too many points. Every point you can take you should fight for it and we really did. It is still a long regatta and everyone is going to make mistakes, we hope we don’t make the most."

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.

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