Emma Wilson is leading the way in the women’s windsurfing as she looks to upgrade her Tokyo bronze.
The Nottingham native is competing in one of the newest sailing events at Paris 2024, the iQFoil, and has finished in the top two in six out of the seven races contested so far in Marseille.
The outlying result, a 17th place finish in the third race, does not count towards Wilson’s score with the lowest finish for each sailor taken out of the overall total.
Wilson responded to her lowest finish by winning the sixth and seventh races of the regatta to sit on eight points overall, 17 ahead of Sharon Kantor of Israel in second.
Her tactic has been to treat the competition like a training session and it is certainly working.
“I just imagine they’re all my training partners and just imagine we’re in a training session and I want to beat them as much as I want to beat these guys,” the 25-year-old said.
“I just keep treating it like that and I keep trying to enjoy it. There’s always going to be challenges and there were today but I just keep trying to smile.
“It’s pretty cool to be doing so well at the Olympics. I just try to take it race by race and see what happens at the end of the week.
“I know it’s all about Friday so I’m trying to save some energy for Friday whilst doing well now.”
Fellow windsurfer Sam Sills is in ninth with six races in the men’s iQFoil gone, having recorded 44 points across the races with three top-ten results.
He is currently 23 points off the lead with 10 races still to go.
“I’m doing my best,” Sills said. “Doing the best I can, just trying to stay focused and deliver.
“It’s tough, it’s really tough. There’s so much jeopardy out there and you’ve just got to keep calm, whatever happens, you’ve got to hold on and keep going.
“We’ve got a great team behind us and just don’t give up, basically."
In the men’s 49er FX, James Peters and Fynn Sterrit won their first race of the regatta in the last race of the day.
After three races without a top-ten finish, the long-time pair have only been out of the top ten once in the following six races.
That culminated with their first win in the ninth race of the regatta to see them sit in fourth, just six points off bronze.
Saskia Tidey and Freya Black secured the first top-three placing of their regatta with a third-place finish in Race 9 of the women’s 49er FX.
The pair lie 17th with 92 points with three races remaining before the medal race, which sees only the top 10 boats compete.
All four events continue tomorrow with the first medal races taking place on Thursday.