Nick Dempsey has stopped apologising, although, fortunately, his fiancée was in forgiving mood. Then again, she had just won an Olympic gold medal. Dempsey is engaged to Sarah Ayton, renowned as the feistiest member of the Yngling crew who won Britain's first gold at the Olympic sailing regatta. The couple's wedding is fixed for October.

But while she was basking in the spotlight of a second gold medal in consecutive Games, Dempsey was having a desperate day at the office. He is windsurfing for gold in Qingdao, but when he climbed off his board after experiencing some of the roughest conditions of the regatta, he was tired and fed up and in no mood for a party, even if it was to celebrate the achievements of his wife-to-be.

He skipped the party for the Yngling women - Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson - and Ben Ainslie, who won his Finn class, where the bubbly was opened and Stephen Park, the sailing team manager, read out messages of congratulation, including one from Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. But Dempsey had more pressing problems on his mind.

“I was obviously really happy for Sarah and it is the best thing in the world for her. I am so pleased,” he said. “But she realised how I felt after having such a bad day and she let me go and sort myself out without worrying about it. I was in a really bad mood and had to apologise a lot. She is really cool, though.

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“But I was really disappointed, everything went wrong for me. It is a bit of a war of attrition, but you have to keep going and going. It is the longest event we ever do and it is about staying focused and working as hard as I did in the first race. It is just a case of keeping it together and sailing as I know I can sail.”

Ayton understood entirely what her man was going through after her gruelling campaign in the Yngling. “Nick's big day is to come yet and he really wants to do his best,” she said. “Nobody would want to party when you have the biggest moment in your sporting life to come.”

The sailing regatta is as tough, mentally and physically, as anything in the Olympics. Each crew faces at least 11 races and windsurfing for 45 minutes on a rough day at sea is said to be as demanding as running 10,000 metres. Except that the windsurfers have to race twice a day.

But Ayton's understanding attitude was echoed in a team in which every one of the 18 members is rooting for the rest and ready to celebrate even more success. The double gold victories on the first day of sailing's medal races have given the British team in Qingdao a huge fillip, although that means that expectations are rising with every medal that is handed over.

Paul Goodison was guaranteed at least a silver medal with a day of his Laser class competition still to run, while Bryony Shaw, in the women's windsurfing, is poised for a medal to follow yesterday's silver chalked up in the 470 class by Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield.

For Dempsey and Ayton relations are back to normal, mainly because Dempsey enjoyed a much better day on the Fushan Bay waves yesterday, hauling himself into second place overall and within sight of a gold medal tomorrow that would make an historic double for the family trophy cabinet - if the new Dempsey family had one, that is. Instead, there are medals and trophies in boxes in the loft or in the garage, or simply in trophy cabinets of sailing clubs and schools.

Ayton and Dempsey, both 28, say that there is no competition between them, but there are signs of a healthy rivalry, spurred on by a private joke that Dempsey will change his name to Ayton after the wedding if his fiancée has a gold medal and he has not.

But Dempsey insisted: “Hey, I have more trophies than Sarah. It is just that she wins all the big events. She just gets medals. And there is no wager about names. She is going to be Mrs Dempsey and that is all there is to it.” However, if Dempsey can make it another gold for Team GB, then the question of name-changing will not arise. For the Dempsey family will be taking home two gold medals to Britain - and this time they will both feel like celebrating.