Yachting: Burling and Tuke rise to the top

New Zealand's Olympic silver medal-winning sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke. Photo/Getty Images

New Zealand's Olympic silver medal-winning sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke took the overall lead at the end of day four at the 49er European Championships in Denmark overnight (NZT).

Lying ninth going into the day, Burling and Tuke appear to find their groove with four single digit races, including a race win, while many of their rivals in the Olympic skiff class struggled for consistency.

The pair managed finishes of second, third, first and seventh, earning an elevation to top the leader-board with two days of racing to come. Previous leaders Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign (Great Britain) sit just one point back in second.

"We sailed pretty well in our first three races, getting top three in all of those,'' Burling said. "Then, the last one, we had a pretty bad first beat and the shifts didn't really go our way.

"We managed to come back through and finish inside the top 10, so we were really happy with the comeback in the last one. We needed this day to get back up the standings a bit.

"It's a different day tomorrow - there's a lot of points on the last days and this just puts us back in the mix.''

The other Kiwi men's crew of Marcus Hansen and Josh Porebski slipped to seventh overall after a 19, 2, 17, 19 scorecard from the day.

Meanwhile, Alex Maloney and Molly Meech retained third in the women's 49erFX at the same venue after racing against the top 16 crews in four races.

Maloney and Meech enjoyed a solid performance, including a seventh, a fourth and two 10ths in today's races. Now on 78 points, they have two Danish crews in their sights, with Jena Hansen and Katja Salskov-Iversen two points away on 76 and leaders Ida Nielsen and Marie Olsen sitting on 62.