Steve Thomas admits some overnight soul-searching led to him and his Sonar teammates enjoying a perfect three race win day in Rio today.

Three-time world champions Thomas, John Robertson and Hannah Stodel were in indefatigable form, leading from start to finish in each of the day’s encounters to start breathing down the necks of the boats currently occupying the medal spots.

The Brits, who train at the Weymouth & Portland Sailing Academy, had endured a difficult opening two days of their Rio 2016 Paralympic regatta and were placed in 12th overall overnight, after finishing at the back of the fleet in yesterday’s only race.

But today’s clean sweep has now moved them to within just two points of the podium places with five races still to come. Thomas insists they can now only keep doing what they have done today.

He said: “Some of the stuff we talked about last night in our debrief got put to bed and we came out on the water today and implemented everything we wanted to, which is quite satisfying.

“We had talked about belief and following our plans. We had a plan yesterday but didn’t follow it so we talked about having confidence in the plan, believing in ourselves and realising we've got the pedigree. We came out with more of a positive mindset, not that we hadn’t in the previous two days, but just a bit more arousal.

“It's a long week and now we're only just over halfway through the regatta. If you look at the scores they're shifting all over the place so we just need to be there or thereabouts come Saturday and see what happens. If we're in the medal zone at the end of the week based on the previous two days racing we will be very happy.”

In fantastic conditions of between 12 to 15 knots of South Westerly breeze on the Escola Naval course, each of the Sonar races became a case of ‘follow my leader’ as the right-hand side of the racetrack was paying so favourably.

Thomas admitted that really put the emphasis on getting good starts and trying to get out on to the right to gain control the race. The Brits’ winning margins in each of the three races were 18, 55 and 31 seconds highlighting their dominant form.

The Welshman added: “There was more pressure and it was pretty much a right-handed track so the priority of the day was to get all the starts right, and then go right as soon as possible.

“We started by the committee boat on all three occasions, got out to the right and tried to get on the lifted tack as much as possible. We had some good speed, our comms were good and the boat was going really well.

“We love the medium to strong breeze as well, that suits us, and all we can do is worry about our own performance so we have to stick to our processes, come out strong and deliver on what we can do.”