MEDIA boats will be held at bay to ensure there is no repeat of Ben Ainslie’s shock disqualification from the World Championships.

But Britain’s sailing gold medal favourites will have to get used to a spotlight on home waters as intense as that faced by footballers, Sir Keith Mills, London 2012’s deputy chairman, has warned.

“The expectation of medals is high,” he said.

“We now have athletes like Ben Ainslie who are household names.

“I think the sailors recognise their behaviour on the course is going to be looked at in the same way as a player on a football pitch.

“The behaviour of referees and players is scrutinised in great detail.

“Our job, and the team at LOCOG, who will be officiating, is to make sure competing athletes do so on as level a field as possible and that media boats and other things that could interfere with their competition are kept at bay.”

A relieved Ainslie was cleared to fight for his fourth Olympic gold this month, after the RYA confirmed he will face no further punishment for boarding a media boat at December’s World Champion-ships to confront the crew he bel-ieved had impeded his racing.

With sailing’s attempts to make the open water sport accessible to a wider audience, the incident has renewed talk about the impact of the official TV boat or helicopters with downdrafts.

Sir Keith said: “Ben has apologised for what he did, as he should, because he over-reacted, but the media boat should not have been where it was.

“Creating a wake for a dinghy is unacceptable in a world championship.

“I think that the marshalling here will be just excellent.”

Sir Keith, a keen sailor himself, said the home Games will produce a ‘pretty revolutionary’ way of bringing sailing to the public.

Britons topped the sailing medals table with six medals – four golds, one silver and one bronze – at the Beijing 2008 Games. This added to five medals at the Athens 2004 Games.

New technology will be trialled at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta here from June 4 to 9 to try to make the sport exciting viewing.

Suggestions include land-based cameras or filming from a fixed location on the water, cameras set aboard as mast cams, bow cams and stern cams or even slung under helium balloons above the course as the innovative RS:X class has been trialling.

Boats will have GPS systems to enable live computer tracking of the course and monitors could also be attached so listeners can hear competitors’ heartbeats.

Sir Keith added that the Nothe Gardens peninsula will have 4,700 people every day ‘in an amphitheatre, cheering the athletes with the finishes as close as we can get to the Nothe.’ He said: “The atmosphere is going to be amazing and that is something that sailors have never experienced before.

“Most athletes compete in a stadium with thousands of spectators – that does not happen in sailing.”