The development squad duo fought their way back into contention from fourth place heading into the final day of racing, fending off competition from world and Olympic medallists, including their own teammates Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes, to keep Britain on the podium for the eighth consecutive 49er World Championship.

It was the first World Championship that Pink and Peacock have contested together, although the pair have hit good form this season having won silver medals at the Miami and Palma legs of the ISAF Sailing World Cup series.

Peacock, a 23-year-old from Redditch, said: “I don’t think it’s really quite sunk in yet, but we’re massively happy."

Pink, 26, said: “After we finished the medal race we thought we were third and were happy enough with that, but then it turned out the Italians were another boat behind where we thought they were, which gave us the silver so that made it even better!

“It had been a pretty tough week and it really paid to be consistent.

“We made some mistakes, but we had to make sure we kept plugging away.

"With only one discard in the final series we had to make sure we didn’t get any terrible scores and we managed to do that and keep ourselves in with a chance.”

Including Pink and Peacock, Britain qualified an impressive four boats into the final 10 boat medal-race.

Morrison and Rhodes, Exmouth’s 2007 world champions and silver medallists last year, just missed out on the podium spots finishing in fourth place overall, Athens bronze medallist Chris Draper and Peter Greenhalgh placed sixth in their first World Championship together, and Paul Campbell-James and Mark Asquith came in ninth.

The world title went for the second consecutive year to Australia’s Nathan Outteridge, sailing with Iain Jensen, with bronze going to the Italian brothers Pietro and Gianfranco Sibello.

Britain's 49er coach Harvey Hillary was quick to congratulate Pink and Peacock on their best ever result, and praised the performance of the British squad in this competitive international fleet.

He said: “John and Rick have worked really hard – they’ve looked at themselves and their campaign and been thorough and professional in seeing what they can do to make that step up, so it’s just brilliant for them to have got a result here.

“The squad as a whole has done really well – we’ve had four boats in the medal race, and just outside were Dave [Evans] and Simon [Hiscocks] in 11th and Dylan [Fletcher] and Alain [Sign] in 13th.

“It’s a real testament to what you can do when working as a group, which will ultimately help push everyone on and means we’re in the best position to be able to compete for gold.”