HANNAH Mills and Saskia Clark made history by becoming the first British sailors to win the women’s 470 world championships in Barcelona.

The Weymouth-based duo claimed silver at the 2011 World Championships but went one better as Skandia Team GBR’s sailors made it two world championships in as many days.

Ben Ainslie won the Finn Gold Cup in Cornwall on Friday, while Mills and Clark fought back from a difficult start to the week to secure victory.

The pair were disqualified in the first race but fought their way to the top of the leaderboard heading into the medal race, where they stayed with a third-place finish.

“Thank God!” said Mills after the final race. “It’s been a long week – a day longer than our events usually are, and made to feel even longer when we got our black flag right at the start, so there was no real room for error after that.

“It was really cool to cross the finish line and know we had done enough. I don’t think it has really sunk in yet for me but Sas is super happy, she’s so excited.”