Ainslie takes emphatic win at Princess Sofia regatta

The boy Ben is back. Triple gold and silver Olympic medallist Ben Ainslie, freed from the cares of a possible America’s Cup campaign, was rewarded for some concentrated winter training with an emphatic win in the singlehanded Finn class at Spain's Princess Sofia regatta today.

And Britain took silver, for good measure, through Giles Scott, both contributing to an overall Skandia GBR team tally of three golds, a silver, and three bronzes.

The other golds went to reigning Olympic champions Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson, who blitzed the opposition in the Star class despite this being their first return to the fray after a long layoff.

The third went to another reigning Olympic champion, Paul Goodison in the lighter weight singlehander, the Laser. One of the bronzes went to Goodison’s rival, Nick Thompson, a second to windsurfer Nick Dempsey, and the third to Megan Pascoe in the paralympic 2.4m class.

But there was disappointment in the 49er high performance dinghy class, where Britain has a strong squad. Best were sixth-placed Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign followed by Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith (8th), Stevie Morrison and ben Rhodes (9th), John Pink and Rick Peacock (10th) and Chris Draper and Pete Greenhalgh (13th).

In the women’s 470 dinghy the Royal navy’s Penny Clark, with crew Katrina Hughes continued to make progress with a 4th – Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark were 13th -