Australian pairing Mathew Belcher and Will Ryan took the lead in the men’s event as the 470 World Championships continued today on Enoshima Bay in Japan ©Getty Images

Australian pairing Mathew Belcher and Will Ryan and British duo Hannah Mills and Eilidh McIntyre took the lead in the men’s and women’s events as the 470 World Championships continued today on Enoshima Bay in Japan.

Multiple world champions Belcher and Ryan managed two runners-up finishes and one third-place finish in today’s three races on the Sagami course at the venue being used for next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

It moves them onto 16 points, one ahead of overnight leaders Jordi Xammar and Nicolás Rodríguez of Spain.

Xammar and Rodríguez won races six and eight with a seventh-place finish sandwiched in between.

Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg Dahlberg and Fredrik Bergström occupy third spot overall with 25 points having ranked fifth, ninth and second.

Dahlberg and Bergström's ninth-place finish is currently discarded and there is a 10-point margin between them and fourth-placed defending world champions Kevin Peponnet and Jérémie Mion of France.

Further back from the frontrunners, the teams representing nations still to qualify for one of the four places for Tokyo 2020 on offer at the event were jostling for track position.

Maintaining their hold on them after race eight are Greece’s Panagiotis Mantis and Pavlos Kagialis, Russia’s Pavel Sozykin and Denis Gribanov, Turkey’s Deniz Çınar and Ateş Çınar, and Hungary’s Balázs Gyapjas and Zsombor Gyapjas.

Rio 2016 Olympic champion Hannah Mills, right, and Eilidh McIntyre have a five-point advantage at the top of the women's standings at the 470 World Championships ©Getty Images
Rio 2016 Olympic champion Hannah Mills, right, and Eilidh McIntyre have a five-point advantage at the top of the women's standings at the 470 World Championships ©Getty Images

In the women’s event, race day four ended with the world number one-ranked team of Mills and McIntyre leading defending world champions and home favourites Ai Kondo Yoshida and Miho Yoshioka.

Mills and McIntyre won races six and eight today, either side of a second-place finish in race seven.

Five points behind them on 29 are Kondo Yoshida and Yoshioka, who started with a 10th-place finish before coming first and second in races seven and eight respectively.

A stunning performance from Italy’s Elena Berta and Bianca Caruso saw them move up to from seventh place to third overall on 51 points.

They registered third, 13th and fourth-place finishes.

In the hunt for Tokyo 2020 qualification, those currently holding the six available nation places are Poland's Agnieszka Skrzypulec and Jolanta Ogar, Australia's Nia Jerwood and Monique Devries, The Netherlands's Afrodite Zegers and Lobke Berkhout, Brazil's Fernanda Oliveira and Ana Barbachan, Israel's Noya Bar-Am and Shahar Tibi, and Germany's Frederike Loewe and Anna Markfort.

Three more races are scheduled for all fleets tomorrow.

They will determine the top-10 medal race line-up for Friday (August 9) and the all-critical nation qualification for Tokyo 2020.