Yachting: Kiwi sailors enjoying gold rush fever

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke on their way to gold at the test regarra in Rio yesterday. Photo / Alex Ferro

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke collected gold in Rio yesterday, continuing a winning streak at the major 49er class regattas dating since their silver at the London Olympics, and hope to replicate the result in two years' time.

The pair won the 49er class at the Olympic sailing test event, finishing eight points clear of Olympic champions Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen of Australia.

New Zealand also claimed silver in the 49erFX class through Alexandra Maloney and Molly Meech and Olympic and world champions Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie were in joint first in the women's 470 heading into the medal races overnight (NZT).

Aleh and Powrie were one of three crews on 15 points going into the final double-points race, along with Anne Haeger and Bri Provancha of the US and the British crew of Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark, meaning the finishing order will determine the podium places.

Burling and Tuke went into the medal races tied with the French pair but produced three solid races (second, fifth, fourth) to claim gold.

"Obviously we're really stoked to take the win here," Burling said. "We're on a pretty good streak at the moment and we're pleased to keep that going. We've been spending a bit of time learning the conditions and not doing our ideal buildup but we're happy to come away from those tricky conditions with a nice win.

"We felt the luck went around and that everybody got lucky and unlucky on occasions, so we're happy with the day.

"We've been doing a lot of racing this year in pretty big fleets in Palma, Hyeres and the Europeans. This has been the first time we've really got down to an Olympic-sized [fleet] and that was one of the positives of the week. It was really good to win in that right size and depth of fleet."

Maloney and Meech were sixth and third in yesterday's two theatre-style medal races in Rio to take the silver medal. Brazilians Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze sailed strongly all week to comfortably secure gold.

The main goal of the Kiwis, like a lot of crews, was to better understand the conditions they will face at the 2016 Olympics.

New Zealand recorded a number of other top-10 placings. Andrew Murdoch finished sixth in the Finn class, with Josh Junior eighth, and Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders were sixth in the Nacra 17.

Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox were sixth in the men's 470 heading in the medal race and Sam Meech was sitting 10th in the Laser class. Sara Winther finished 11th in the Laser Radial.