HELENA Lucas goes into the final race of Rio 2016 tomorrow within touching distance of defending her 2.4mR Paralympic title after a dramatic day on Guanabara Bay.

The London 2012 champion holds a solitary point advantage over Damien Seguin (FRA) with Matt Bugg (AUS) in third 10 points further back with one race to come, after the Australian was disqualified from today’s second race in the protest room.

Lucas had provisionally finished racing today with placings of third and sixth, which had put her four points behind the then leader Bugg with that final race to follow.

But after Spain’s Arturo Montes Vorcy successfully protested Bugg for a right of way incident in race 10, combined with the Australian coming 14th in the day’s first race, Lucas was the main beneficiary, returning to the top of the rankings.

Now she knows what she has to do tomorrow.

“I need to go out and sail my own race,” she said.

“I have to hope that conditions fall into my hands and then absolutely go out there and win the race. We will then see what happens, it’s the best plan I can have.

“Generally I think I have been starting well and have really good speed upwind so that has really helped. I’ve tried to keep it simple when I can, which is really hard as people are tacking on you left right and centre, so it is a battle, an absolutely battle.”

Having been a point behind Bugg heading into today, Lucas seized back the overall initiative in the opening race when, after the Australian had inadvertently sailed the wrong course to cross the line in 14th place, the Brit finished third to return to the 2.4mR summit with a point lead over her then closest rival.

But she was left ruing a poor final downwind run that saw her drop three places from third at the windward mark to sixth across the line in race two – the penultimate race of the regatta.

Despite having the ball in her court going into the final showdown, Lucas could still end the regatta without a medal altogether as a disqualification from earlier this week, and Dee Smith (USA) currently 12 points behind her, means she has zero leeway to post any sort of poor score tomorrow if she is going to end on the podium.

Lucas just wants to make sure she avoids making any of the same mistakes that almost cost her today.

She added: “In the second race I thought everyone was really close to the start line, so I held back but had a bit of a poor start. I managed to work myself back into the hunt and get up to third by the top of the third beat.

“I worked so hard to do it and then I let Heiko (Kroeger) roll me down the run. I had to gybe out and then gybe back again thinking I will be fine, coming in with speed under the group, but they just had pressure and I think I was in their wind shadow.

“That was pretty painful, when it’s so tight on points I couldn’t afford to do that. I fought so hard round that racetrack so it was really painful.

“Everyone is just fighting for every single point, it doesn’t matter where they are in the overall standings. Quite often you see people who are out of it a bit give up, whereas everyone is just still fighting here whether they are sixth, eighth or 10th.”

The warning signal for tomorrow’s final 2.4mR race will be 6pm (BST). No race can be started after 6.30pm.