As the numbers are crunched, the excitement builds. For the British girls in the Yngling class there is a possibility that tomorrow could be their last and proudest day as a medal possibility comes into sight. Understandably they’re trying not to dwell on the subject for fear of tempting fate or ruining their form.

“We’re winning so we are excited, but we just have to try to just deal with the races as they come,” said Sarah Ayton. “Things occasionally come into my head and I have to say to myself no, don’t think about it, just deal with the racing.

“We’ve only got three races left and a discard so we’ve still got to put in two solid races.”

In the women’s 470 class the Greek pairing of Sofia Bekatorou and Amilia Tsoulfa look set to be crowned in this class as they stride out in front of the second placed Slovenians by a huge 21 points.

While other classes aren’t quite there yet, there are indications that the tape is in sight. In the Finns, Ben Ainslie is turning in the kind of results that he and others expected and has increased his overall lead to 8 points over the Spanish sailor Rafael Trujillo.

With the news that the Jury will not reopen the controversial protest from day 1, the way ahead seems pretty clear, Ben needs to keep his nose clean and continue to pull his way through the fleet, something he seems to specialise in whatever the weather. Yet the need to push hard at Olympic level and not taking too many risks is a very difficult balance to strike.

“You’ve got to be careful, you can’t afford to have a bad race but at the same time you’ve still got to be pushing, trying to get a good start, going the right way and taking all the places that you can. It’s a really fine line,” he said.

Nick Rogers and Jo Glanfield in the 470 class have squeezed out another two points to eek out in front of the American sailors.

“The Americans are quite close particularly as neither of us have a particularly good discard anymore,” said Glanfield. “One thing that’s different in this Olympics from the last is that out of 11 races we’ve only got one discard, there were two last time. So we’ve just got to go out there and put more points between us and sail as well as we can.

“If we start messing around with each other there’s a risk that someone else will get a couple of bullets and we’ll be back in the pack again.”

Laser superstar Robert Scheidt was knocked off his perch today when Austrian Andreas Geritzer scored a 1st and a 2nd and now leads the Brazilian by 3 points overall.

Another favourite who took a dunking today was Siren Sundby in the Europe class who scored a grim 19th in the first race of the day before regaining her composure in the second race and notching up a 4th. The first race is all the more damaging given that a disqualification in race three means that she’ll have to carry the double figure result from today. That said she is just 5 points off the leader who is currently the Australian sailor, Sarah Blanck.