Ainslie Sees Choppy Waters for Great Britain

The yachting venue for this summer's Olympic Games is a "sailor's nightmare" that could imperil the British team's chances of repeating the success of recent games, according to the double Olympic champion Ben Ainslie.

Ainslie, who was yesterday handed the opportunity to compete for a third consecutive gold medal after being among the first nine athletes selected for Team GB, has competed at the venue in Qingdao for the last two years and said conditions were far from ideal. Light winds, strong currents and persistent fog are likely to hamper racing at the venue, and there are genuine concerns in the British team that their competitive advantage could be negated there.

"It is a very light-air venue with strong currents and quite often very poor visibility, and it could be a bit of a sailor's nightmare," he said. "But we know that, we have trained there for the last two seasons and when it comes to the race day you just have to get on with it."

Ainslie's criticism of Qingdao was echoed by Stephen Park, the Olympic team leader of the Royal Yachting Association, who harbors genuine concerns that the venue will work against his athletes.

The nine team members announced yesterday include four gold medalists, five current world champions and three crews that won their class in the 2007 test events in Qingdao, and Park is confident that the team is the strongest the RYA has ever sent to an Olympic regatta.

Ainslie is joined in the squad by the Athens Yngling gold medalists Sarah Webb and Sarah Ayton, who are joined by the newcomer Pippa Wilson. The trio defeated a boat skippered by Shirley Robertson, Webb and Ayton's former team-mate, to win their Beijing spot. The Sydney gold medalist Iain Percy competes in the two-handed Star class alongside Andrew Simpson, Paul Goodison is selected for the Laser and Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes will race in the 49er class.

Sailing has become Britain's most successful Olympic sport, with five medals from 11 classes at both the Athens and Sydney games prompting optimism that the total will be exceeded in China. Concerns about conditions, however, have led Park to revise his target to three medals. Light winds and fog could lead to the number of races in each medal series being reduced from the standard 11 (or 16 for the 49ers), an eventuality that would open up the field of potential medalists considerably.

"If the games were in Weymouth [venue for the 2012 regatta] then I think our goal would be higher than three medals, but as we go into this Olympics the conditions are going to be challenging," Park said.

"There is quite a lot of fog, which is not great for TV and it means sometimes it is difficult to see the marks when you are on the water. On a lot of days only two or three hours sailing are possible, which poses a real challenge for the organizers.

"The number of races in each series could be low and at the recent test event the competition rules stated that just a single race would constitute a series. A short series of races brings in a lot more variability into the results, and if we were guaranteed 11 races or 16 in the 49er class then I would be more confident that things will go with the form book."

Ainslie, who won the Finn class in Athens, gold in the Laser in Sydney and a silver in the same boat at the Atlanta games, edged out his rival Ed Wright for the single Finn entry in Beijing a matter of months after his involvement in the America's Cup ended last year.

Ainslie has not ruled out competing in Weymouth in 2012 despite being contracted to compete for the Team Origin consortium in the America's Cup. "We'll have to see how the dates pan out before I can make a decision," he said yesterday.

Line-up for Quingdao

Finn class: Ben Ainslie

Yngling: Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb, Pippa Wilson

49er: Stevie Morrison, Ben Rhodes

Laser: Paul Goodison

Star Iain Percy, Andrew Simpson