Star triumph caps British medal haul

By Justin Palmer

QINGDAO (Reuters) - Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson capped a superb Olympic regatta for Britain, winning the Star class to secure a fourth sailing gold for the 2012 Games hosts.

Britain finished the Qingdao regatta as the top sailing nation for the third straight Olympics with a haul of six medals.

Percy, 32, won gold in the Finn dinghy in 2000 but said this triumph was "sweeter".

"It was unbelievable, so special. We felt good this morning, I knew we weren't going to bottle it and we didn't," said Percy, who was sixth in the Star in Athens along with Steve Mitchell. He joined forces with Simpson last year.

"It's been a killer four years and I am so glad it's behind me."

Brazil's Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada took silver and Fredrik Loof and Anders Ekstrom of Sweden won bronze in the final race of the regatta.

Both finished level on 53 points with the Brazilians securing silver after finishing ahead of the Swedes, who began the day in first place, in the decisive medal race.

There was confusion after the race, with the Swedes believing they had won silver when information screens reversed the medal race finishing positions and showed they were ninth in a blanket finish -- enough for silver -- and not the original 10th which left them in bronze.

Some minutes passed before the Swedes' result was corrected back to 10th.

"We concluded we had won silver, then we got in and a guy comes up to us and says we had not got silver, but bronze," a stoic Ekstrom told Reuters. "They wrote the wrong number."

The 35-year-old Scheidt adds a silver to the two gold and a silver he won in the one-man Laser dinghy at previous Games.

Scheidt's girlfriend, Lithuanian Laser Radial sailor Gintare Volungeviciute, also won silver in Qingdao and the Brazilian said: "It's somewhat romantic. Silver to silver, it matches well."

(Editing by Alison Williams)