There may be three years to go until the next Olympic Games, but the venues for 2012 are already inspiring British athletes. Last month Alistair Brownlee won the World Championship Series triathlon on the Olympic course in Hyde Park, London, and Great Britain’s sailors were similarly motivated by the first regatta at the completed National Sailing Academy in Weymouth, Dorset, in front of more than 1,000 spectators.

Britain won two gold medals, four silvers and a bronze at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta on Saturday, to go with two silver medals that had been won on Friday in the Paralympic events, and as a result claimed five of the 13 overall World Cup titles at this final event in the season.

Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson, the Olympic champions in the Star class, led from start to finish, winning two of their first three races and coming second in the third. A third win in the fifth race created such a buffer that seventh place in the medal race would have been sufficient for gold.

As it was, the medal race was abandoned for the Star — as it was for the Finn, Laser and windsurfing classes — because of light winds, although after champagne conditions earlier in the week the organisers are happy that Weymouth will provide a better regatta than the often flat breezes at Qingdao did for last year’s Olympics.

Percy, who will now return to larger boats as the tactician for Ben Ainslie’s challenge for the America’s Cup, said that he and Simpson could improve despite their impressive results. “We didn’t sail brilliantly this week but we sailed better than the rest,” he said. “It’s great to win, but it’s all about what happens at 2012.”

Ed Wright sealed the overall World Cup series for Britain in the Finn, but had to settle for silver on Saturday when his medal race was abandoned. With Giles Scott and Andrew Mills winning races earlier in the week, the Finn class is a strength for Britain.

So is the men’s 470 class. Nic Asher and Elliot Willis won Britain’s second gold, holding off Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell, their team-mates, in the medal race. Asher and Willis had been level with Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page before the last race, but when the Australians made a false start, Asher and Willis could afford to finish eighth. Patience and Bithell, who have been together for only a month, came second to finish two points behind their compatriots.

Nick Thompson, in the Laser, and the women’s match-racing crew of Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Ally Martin won their World Cup titles, although Macgregor’s crew were beaten 2-1 in their final by the Netherlands, while Thompson was seventh, two places behind Paul Goodison, the world and Olympic Laser champion, who won two of his last three races to charge up the rankings after a shoulder injury had stymied his start.

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