Brownlee facing tough decision over future tilt at world title

The Leeds 25-year-old was the favourite to win a third world crown in London on Sunday, but an ankle injury severely hampered him on the 10km run and he finished down in 52nd place.

Despite his phenomenal success, Brownlee has frequently suffered injuries and only recovered from an Achilles problem just in time to win gold at the Olympics last year.

The world title has been decided over a series of races for the last five years, with athletes needing to compete in five events around the world to stand a chance of winning.

Brownlee said: “I’m not convinced the series is necessarily a good thing for me. I’ve thought that for a while. It’s tough on the body but it’s also fantastic to race and it’s fantastic to watch.

“It’s a shame but if it’s not for me I’m going to have to make a decision at some point just to select races.

“If I asked myself this season, would I have preferred to win the three races I did or preferred to be fully fit and win London, even if it meant I came lower in the series, I would have preferred to win this race.”

The relentless nature of the 
series means Brownlee has not been able to recover from the injury he first suffered four months ago and he came close to not even starting Sunday’s race.

He said: “Various different things have been wrong in the same ankle and I think they’ve moved around one thing to another.

“It’s like anything, when you’ve got a bit of an injury you need a sustained time of rest and rehabilitation to get it better and one fact of having a series, and I suppose me being so stubborn and trying to do the series, is you’ve got to race quite frequently.

“It just hasn’t had the chance to settle down. I’m going to have a rest now and try to find out what’s definitely wrong with it and see what I need to do to get it better.”

It had been an almost perfect weekend for British Triathlon until Sunday, with Non Stanford winning the women’s race to be crowned world champion and Jodie Stimpson finishing second in the series.

With Alistair Brownlee down the field, brother Jonny was in pole position to win the world title but was pipped to both race honours and the overall crown by Spain’s Javier Gomez.

Performance director Brendan Purcell said: “It’s been an awesome competition from the British athletes, from the juniors and the paratriathletes through to the under-23s and the seniors.”