19/09/2009

Britain won two golds, four silvers and a bronze on the final day of the Sail for Gold regatta in Weymouth.
Olympic Star champions Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson were awarded gold after light winds cancelled the final medal race in their class early on Saturday.

Nic Asher and Elliott Willis clinched 470 gold after their last race was able to go ahead in the afternoon breeze.

Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell (470), Lucy Macgregor's matchracers, Ed Wright (Finn) and Bryony Shaw all won silvers.

Pippa Wilson and Saskia Clark completed the haul with bronze in the women's 470.

Percy and Simpson led by 13 points going into Saturday's deciding medal race, but the fresh winds of earlier in the week gave way to calm and the British duo were awarded the victory when the medal races for the top 10 in the Star, Finn and both men's and women's windsurfing classes were cancelled early on.

"It's a shame not to race today but it's the right decision by the organisers," said the 33-year-old Percy, who also won gold in the Finn in Sydney. "We all want to get out there and race but we don't want to ruin a great week with a bit of a charade."

The Britons scored three wins and a second among their eight qualifying races to beat Swedish pair Fredrik Loof and Johan Tilander.

"We sailed pretty well," added Percy. "We haven't trained much this year at all but I guess it's a bit of a hangover from all the training we did for the Olympics.

"We made a couple of mistakes and amazingly they're the things I'm annoyed about now rather than doing well. They were real schoolboy errors that cost us serious points but that's what practice does - it just makes the bread and butter easier.

"Bart [Simpson] was on fire all week as always, tactically downwind, which is his area, picking up places and upwind I was just getting us into good positions so we're pretty pleased."