Hannah Mills and Eilidh McIntyre win Team GB’s third Olympic sailing gold

 Mills and McIntyre secured seven top-three finishes in their 10 races before the double-points medal race to give themselves a healthy 14-point lead over the French duo of Camille Lecointre and Aloise Retornaz.

Mills, who was a flag-bearer for Team GB during the opening ceremony alongside the rower Mohamed Sbihi, won a silver medal in London 2012 and then gold in Rio in 2016 before her then partner, Saskia Clarke, retired from Olympic racing. She and the 27-year-old McIntyre began sailing as a pair in 2017 and won the World Cup Series in at Santander in Spain in their first race together.

The gold puts Team GB clear of Australia at the top of the sailing medal table with three golds, one silver and one bronze. This is their second most successful sailing medal haul behind Beijing 2008, where they secured four golds, one silver and one bronze.