Sailing legend Ben Ainslie is re-staking his claim on the waters he sailed on as a child at the borough’s biggest ever Olympic-class sailing regatta.

Britain’s triple gold medallist missed out on the podium at last year’s Skandia Sail for Gold regatta when he finished fourth at his first major event in the Finn heavyweight dinghy class after taking a two-year break to yacht race in the America’s Cup.

But after a year’s worth of competitive Finn racing and training on Weymouth and Portland’s 2012 waters has paid off with an early claim for supremacy at this year’s event for the four-time Olympian.

Ainslie swept to the top of the leaderboard after day two of racing and his sights are firmly fixed on claiming gold at Saturday’s final medal race – when double points are awarded.

This year’s Sail for Gold regatta is almost as big as the Olympics, according to Ainslie because so many national teams are using the event as a crucial component of their selection process.

He is up against tough competition both internationally from Croatia’s Ivan Kliakovic Gaspic and New Zealand’s Dan Slater and the British team with Portland’s defending champion Giles Scott, Bournemouth’s Ed Wright, Lymingto’'s Andrew Mills and development squad sailor of the year Mark Andrews all in contention.

But fresh from two World Cup wins at Hyeres and Palma, Ben is feeling on top form at the fifth leg of the ISAF Sailing World Cup series.

Ainslie, 34, said: “I’m much more prepared so I’m happy about that. Giles, Ed, Andrew and Mark are all tough guys to beat, we’ve all trained together a lot over the years and get on well but when we’re racing it’s each man for himself.”

At the Beijing Games, Ben was struck down by mumps and needed to be kept isolated from the rest of the team but still managed to pull a gold out the bag when it counted.

He added: “A home Olympics is once-in-a-lifetime and it’s incredible the amount of effort that goes in to transforming venues with security, the world’s media and everyone building up to such a huge event.

“Weymouth and Portland is where a lot of my generation learnt to sail with youth training competitions and to think that 15 to 20 years later we could be racing in the Olympics on the same waters is very special.

“There’s definitely an aura around about the Olympic Games that is just incredible and hopefully people will get to experience that in Weymouth.”

View the latest results at skandiasailforgoldregatta.co.uk