Ensuing Paige Railey of the United States, who secured a gold medal in Laser Radial prior to the medal race, Briton Ben Ainslie also topped the overall ranking of Finn with a 20-point lead over second placed Emilios Papathanasiou of Greece at the Qingdao International Regatta on Tuesday.

Though Ainslie's six consecutive bullets were dashed by World Champion Jonas Hoegh-Christensen of Denmark in Tuesday's first race, Ainslie won the next race, establishing a 20-point lead over second placer overall Papathanasiou. According to the rule, Ainslie has virtually secured the gold medal. What he needs to do on the medal race is to go through it.

Ainslie said after the races: "It was a bit different today, remarkably different from all the other days. The wind was 15 to 20 knots with big waves. It was really good sailing and really good fun.

"In the start of the first race, I missed the tacking angles just a bit and I sailed straight into another boat. So I took a penalty for that and it put me right to the back of the fleet at the beginning of the race. But I plowed my way right back into it which is pleasing.

"It is good for me in light wind because of my weight. Today I was very pleased because I didn't think I would do so well in those conditions. It was a lot of effort and hard work, but it was nice results today," he added.

On the medal race, he said: "Well hopefully I've got a quite big lead now. It'll be nice just to watch others racing around and see what happens. Hopefully I'll stay out of trouble and not cause anybody else too much trouble."

Olympic Champion Faustine Merret of France extended her lead in RS:X Women to 13 points over second placed Sun Limei of China. Polish Malgorzata Bialecka ranked third while Olympic runner-up Yin Jian of China dropped to the fourth place.

In 470 Men, Britons Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield now enjoy a 17-point overall lead and almost touch the overall victory.

Rogers said: "We had a third and a sixth. We are definitely first overall at the moment. So it's a good day! But it's really hard because we have some bad start, so we have to catch up a lot of places. But now it's good."

Bad day for 470 Women overall leaders Ingrid Petitjean and Nadege Douroux of France as they took a 17th finish in the tenth race, cutting their lead to five points.

Petitjean was not satisfied with their performance. She said: "Today our performance is very bad. We were the ninth from 100 meters before the finishing line, so I have no idea where we finished, but it was quite far away. At the moment I'm not satisfied.But for the races in the week I am satisfied."

As for RS:X Men, hosts China now had three sailors in the top four. Fang Zhennan, Wang Aichen and He Feng ranked first, third and fourth respectively. Polish Lukasz Grodzicki stood second overall, six points behind Fang.

The other three events held on Tuesday were Tornado, Star and Yngling, all of which have the tenth round and medal race to go.

(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2006)