In all weathers, Yorkshire’s hills and dales were our path to Olympic glory

Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee grew up in an ordinary family in the leafy suburbia of West Yorkshire. Encouraged by their parents they spent much of their childhood outdoors and those formative years laid the foundations for their future success in the triathlon.

The pair came to worldwide attention during last summer’s Olympic Games in London when elder brother Alistair, 25, won gold and 23-year-old Jonny took bronze in the same event. Since the medal ceremony Jonny has claimed his second consecutive win in the World Triathlon Series, Alistair was victorious in the Abu Dhabi Triathlon and by jointly writing a new book Bike, Swim, Run, the former Bradford Grammar School pupils have been able to reflect on just how far they have come.

Alistair

Mum and Dad were always happy to indulge my independent streak, the desire to do it all myself. At an age when most kids aren’t even walking home from school alone I was disappearing off into the Dales on long solo bike rides, refusing Dad’s offer of his mobile phone in case I got lost; I would just take a quick glance at the map and tell them breezily that I could remember it all.

When I was nine, Dad took me to my first Leeds Schools Cross Country Championships – 450 entrants, no age categories and me three years younger than the big lads. I finished 400th.

Dad said I was bright red in the face. The part he considers most significant came as we sat trying to warm up. “I think I’m a bit tubby for a runner,” I told him. “I think I’ll stop eating chips and puddings.” And I did. I switched to boiled potatoes and fruit, although it wasn’t long until I changed my mind.

I did my first duathlon in east Leeds at the age of nine. The swim part of it was fine. It was the run where things started to go wrong; within 100m my shoe came off. These were not nice streets – there was broken glass all over the place, grit, gravel, dog mess – you name it. Mum and Dad were shouting at me to stop, but there was no way that was happening. I kept going, minus one shoe, and made it all the way round. With feet that were blistered and bleeding. I loved every second of it.

I hated the idea of anything stopping me exercising. It didn’t matter if there was horizontal sleet battering against the windows, I’d stick on my vest and shorts and head out.

Aged 10, I decided I wanted to get up early for an extra run before school. I would set my alarm clock for 6.30am, jump out of bed, wake up Dad and force him to come with me. Dad, being less keen 
on such early starts, would wait until I was asleep and then sneak into my room to turn the alarm off. But, being determined to get my run in, I would then hide the alarm clock so he was unable to switch it off. I won.

I was such a small boy for my age that Mum and Dad couldn’t have imagined I would ever be a professional sportsman. But there were symptoms appearing everywhere.

In swimming lessons at the City of Leeds club I would start each term at the back of the lane. A week in, I’d be fast enough to be moved to the front. I had a friend whose father had been a pro rugby player. He took Mum aside once and said that I would make it. She thought he was bonkers. “What, that skinny little thing?”

The same thing happened 
when I was 12 and running my first 800m race for Bingley Harriers. I came last. But an old boy came up to my Mum afterwards and said, with absolute certainty, that I would one day become a great runner. To this day, Mum has no idea who he was, but within a few 
years she was forced to start believing him.

Eventually Jonny and I began attending winter training camps run by British Triathlon. The northern camps were both brutal and enormous amount of fun. On one we had to run up Ingleborough and as we left the youth hostel in vests and shorts the snow started to come in horizontally. With every 50m climbed, it got heavier and the wind stronger. As we came down the other side, we saw the only other people we would see on the peak all day – all of them wearing crampons.

Faced with those sort of adventures, the kids who were always going to drop out did 
drop out. The two of us would have wanted to do all that good stuff anyway, but the motivating factor was having those camps every single month all the way through every winter, learning from people who were older than you, was critical to our development.

Jonny

The origin of our sporting genes is something of a family dispute. Mum used to swim when she was younger. Breaststroke was her forte, and she swam a few times for Wales. Dad is from Cleveland and he ran for his county. Our granddad on our dad’s side, Norm from Hartlepool, is always telling us we have him to thank for where we are today.

First, he claims one of his relatives was a national pole-vault champion. We have never been able to verify this part of the story. Secondly, during the war his father, Archibald, was in the Merchant Navy. The ship he was crewing was sunk, and he managed to swim ashore. Norm states this proves that our own swimming abilities come from him. He also says he has always been the fittest man he knows on the basis that he walks five miles every morning.

We lived most of our early years outdoors. Our grandparents owned a tiny cottage in Coverdale, tucked in on the south side of Wensleydale. It was a basic place – the two of us and, later, little brother Ed, all crammed into one bedroom and while there was no back garden, there were miles of empty countryside all around and a big lake at Semerwater, where we could swim and sail. The cycling was fantastic, tiny roads snaking out from the hamlet into the fells and fields. We’d take a little boat out onto Semerwater, Al trying to capsize it, me getting so sick of him trying that I would just jump in and swim back to the shore. Even at Easter, when the water was still freezing, we’d be there in our wetsuits, swimming out and around the buoy. I was dragged into sport because of Alistair. Had he not already been swimming at the City of Leeds club, I’m sure I would never have stuck at it. At one session you had to swim a full-length underwater, kicking only, before you were allowed to get out. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t do it. I was still trying long after everyone else had left.

Those sessions were on a Sunday evening and affected the entire day. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, at 3pm it would all have to be sacrificed. Arguably it was too much for a kid of my age. Equally, that’s the stuff that makes you strong. Why did I keep going? Because Alistair did, and because my parents made me. When my parents forced me to do anything, I invariably wanted to do the opposite.

I found I was far better at team sports. I got pretty good at football, good enough in my early teens to be spotted by coaches from Leeds United, at which point my mum told them not to be so stupid. Couldn’t they see that I was too small?

Alistair was hopeless at any sport that required co-ordination. He tried gymnastics, and was the most awkward kid in the hall; then in his only recorded game of cricket, he spent his time making daisy chains on the boundary and completely failed to see the ball the only time it came anywhere near him.

But it was Alistair’s influence that got me to try my first triathlon, aged eight. As he got better the influence grew stronger. At a point when all I wanted to do was play football or rugby, the fact that he was bringing home cool free kit – T-shirts, bike jerseys, tri-suits, then these incredible bikes – got me thinking: wow, I want to be a part of that.

That he was always training made it easier for me to go as well. He found the run routes, he found the training groups. And he was always there to train with.

Sometimes if you’re forced to do stuff, you want to do the opposite. When my parents stopped forcing me to swim, bike and run, that’s when I wanted to do them again.

The Brownlee Triathlon

With the number of people wanting to follow in the Brownlee brothers footsteps, Alistair and Jonny recently decided to launch their own event on home soil.

The inaugural Brownlee Triathlon will take place at Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey on September 21. The brothers are both planning to be on the start line and are hoping to encourage other world class athletes to take part.

For more information go to www.brownleetriathlon.com and look out for updates on Twitter @Brownleetri

Swim Bike Run – Our Triathlon Story by Alistair and Jonathan Browlee is published by Viking, priced £20 to order a copy from the Yorkshire Post bookshop call 01748 821122.