Southampton University team racer Dom Johnson trounced the cream of British Olympic medallists on the first day of the Chernikeeff RYA National Match Racing Championship Finals in London Docklands.

He lost only to Graham Sunderland and Olympic champion Shirley Robertson but beat Olympians Richard Sydenham, Hugh Styles and Adam May to earn a place in the final 16.

"It came down to crew work. You could make a lot of gains on hoists and around the corners. The crew kept it all slick and made it easy for me," said Dom.

"The qualifier (BUSA championship) was the first time I'd even helmed a yacht, let alone match raced so my aim here was just to make a name for myself in match racing as I've been doing it for two years as a crew (for Tom Hebbert) and I now want to get my foot in the door as a helmsman."

After seven months of qualifying rounds, Johnson is now in with a shout of becoming the new British Match Racing champion. Paul Campbell-James, the youngest skipper in the fleet and brother of current youth world match racing champion, Mark, also proved he will be a formidable match racer in the future by equalling Johnson's win/loss ratio.

Paul arrived in London 48 hours after winning his class at the Volvo RYA Youth Trials in Falmouth, Cornwall, and sealing his place in the RYA British team for the Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships in Sydney, Australia later this year. Olympic middleman Richard Sydenham scraped through in seventh place to make the final 16 scheduled to race today.

"I think we need to crack the boat-handling so we can get our heads out of the boat. At the moment we're all concentrating on our jobs because we're not confident with them as we haven't sailed in those positions for quite a while," explained Richard.

"We got better as the days went on but we're still not quite tactically on the case. It's pretty easy to come to this venue and lose a few matches so it's probably a bonus for us to sail today to warm up."

One of the most entertaining matches of day one was between future husband and wife, Jamie Goad and Shirley Robertson. Goad held the lead by five boat lengths after the first lap although Robertson won the match!