Jonny Brownlee revels in pressure of going it alone

In the absence of world champion brother Alistair, who is almost back to full fitness after an Achilles injury, the 22-year-old eased to victory in San Diego two weeks ago for his first major win over the Olympic distance at senior level.

He was even more commanding yesterday, helping a group of nine to a big lead on the tough bike course around Casa de Campo park and then rapidly pulling away from his rivals on the 10km run.

Javier Gomez, who is likely to be the brothers’ main rival at the Olympics this summer, also missed his home race through illness, giving Brownlee the chance to hone his front-running skills.

He said: “It’s completely different racing without Alistair and Gomez especially not having Alistair here because we do everything together.

“But I’ve quite enjoyed having a bit more pressure and it not just being, ‘Alistair’s going to win and I’ll come second if I’m lucky’.

“It’s been good to have to try to take the race to people instead of having Alistair do that and then me follow. Coming first is obviously good because you want to teach yourself to win. It’s a skill in itself.

“I think I have developed as an athlete without Alistair. But I’ll go home and he’ll probably beat me on the track on Tuesday then I’ll be back to normal.”

The pattern for the race was set in the swim, when the Russian contingent pushed the pace and forced a split in the pack.

The field fractured even more as the athletes set off on their bikes, with British duo Will Clarke and Stuart Hayes, who had been towards the front after the swim, missing the front group.

That quickly proved costly as the leaders pulled away, and by the time they started the 10km run they had an advantage of almost two and a half minutes.

Brownlee was never likely to be challenged by any of his fellow breakaway riders and he quickly pulled away, eventually winning by 40 seconds from Russian duo Alexander Bryukhankov and Dmitry Polyanskiy.

Alistair Brownlee, who had won the Madrid race for the last three years, is training hard in Yorkshire and is on schedule to return for the next race in Kitzbuhel in a month.

“He’s training properly again now and getting back to doing run sessions,” added Jonny. “He’s pretty fit at the moment. He’s done some different training because he can’t do as much running but he’ll be back by Kitzbuhel.”