Jonny Brownlee retires: Yorkshire great on brotherly 'superpower', Olympic career and what comes next
On the day Jonny Brownlee announced his retirement as a professional athlete by conducting a round of interviews with the local media he has always appreciated, the triathlon trailblazer still found time for a bike ride with his big brother Alistair.
Old habits die hard.
It was not as intense a training session as the ones of yesteryear, that took the Brownlees to the top step of podiums around the world, but it nevertheless served as a timely reminder of the enduring strength of a bond that shaped a sport.
“We went over to Burnsall on our bikes, it’s still a good way for us to have a catch up,” smiles Jonny, the competitive edge of professional sport having drained from Alistair some 18 months before it did the younger brother.
“It’s a very different vibe to how it used to be. Our journey today involved a coffee stop and a very easy ride. Alistair has just come back from his travels so was a bit tired. I’ve been injured as well, so neither of us wanted to push each other. He certainly didn’t want to push me because it wouldn’t have ended very well for him…”
Retiring then, but competitive to the last.
Jonny Brownlee is stepping away from professional competition because he no longer wants to push his body to the limit.
He had hoped this weekend’s Supertri Pro Series finale in Jersey would be his last event, a chance to go out with one last victory, but time has caught up with him.
“My body has said no,” he tells The Yorkshire Post. “I have asked a lot of my body over the years and it’s very rarely let me down, so it’s allowed to do that.
“It’s not a process where you wake up one morning and think that’s it. It’s very much been the last year and a half, weaning off being a professional athlete - taking training less seriously, missing sessions whether that’s for my son Freddie or for other reasons, prioritising other things.
“I gave 100 per cent to this sport and I’m not prepared to do that anymore. I don’t want to make that sacrifice. Injuries have told me I can’t train at the level I was at and I don’t want to do it half-heartedly.”
Alistair said similar in December 2024 when he stepped away from professional racing, coincidentally at the same age as his brother does now, 36.
And so closes the long and illustrious chapter of the Brownlees as competitors, two proud Yorkshiremen whose influence on triathlon was transformative.
Individually they were phenomenal athletes; together, unbeatable.
Jonny was just 22 when he won bronze behind his brother at the Olympics in London and the world title in the same year.
Four years later he upgraded to silver as Alistair made history as the first man to defend an Olympic triathlon title.
At the peak of their powers the triathlon world centred around the Brownlee brothers. Those training sessions out of their front door in Bramhope, up to Chevin Country Park and out into the Dales set the standard for rivals to either join or copy.
They were so influential that they brought a World Series event to Leeds for five straight years.
Older brother Alistair was the pioneer, but Jonny was always coming off the bend in hot pursuit.
“Alistair was the groundbreaker, he showed that a lad from Yorkshire could do it. And I copied,” admits Jonny.
“I remember watching him from the stands in Beijing in 2008. He'd got there by cycling to school and running at lunchtime, and it made me realise I can do that as well.
“I was the consistent one. If Alistair deviated off that plan I was always chasing him so he had to continually get better.
“We were unbelievably lucky to go through the whole stress of the Olympics together. And when he stopped the Olympic races I did miss that. The races became a little bit lonely.
"That was our superpower. We were fortunate enough to have that and you don’t appreciate it until it stops.”
Jonny knew his place was behind Alistair, but when injuries finally caught up with the latter and ended his chances of a third gold in Tokyo, the stage was clear for Jonny to step out of his brother’s shadow.
He delivered, busting a gut to finish fifth in the individual and finally win gold in the inaugural mixed team relay in 2021.
“It was massive becoming Olympic champion, I’d have felt that something was missing from my career had I not got that gold medal,” says Jonny.
“But also to do it without Alistair, for once in my career to not be known as a Brownlee brother, but Jonny Brownlee on his own. I was also proud of my individual performance to come fifth. I’d really fully committed to it, I used up all the last remaining bits of energy in Tokyo. I trained for it like it was my last Olympic Games.”
Good job he did, because he didn’t get another chance in Paris. As Alistair discovered three years earlier, no matter what you have done for a sport, time and new blood waits for no one.
Looking back on missing out in 2024, Jonny admits to being bitter and “p***ed off”, emotions that reflect his competitive nature, if not his character as a whole (you couldn’t wish to meet a nicer person in sport).
He wasn’t upset for long. He got married later that summer, priorities began to shift, the wheels set in motion on the decision he has now arrived at.
Asked for career highlights, two stand out. “London 2012,” he beams. “Unbelievable. I remember catching the train down from Leeds with all our Olympic kit on. We stayed in a Thistle Hotel which was a former Leeds United sponsor, one of my first kits. And then being in Hyde Park, not knowing how to feel because it was my first Olympic Games. I was worried everyone will have trained really hard and become supermen, but then quickly realised people don’t change that much.
“The roar of the crowd, the Yorkshire flags, picking out the voices of my teachers, being annoyed I got the penalty and thinking I can’t lose it because of this. Crossing that finish line thinking ‘wow, we’ve done it’. My first reaction was that we hadn’t let anyone down because I’d been worried about that. Flying back to Leeds Bradford Airport on a helicopter, to the homecoming in Millennium Square and the thousands of people being there. I could talk about London 2012 for hours.
“And then the second highlight is the Leeds World Series in 2016. I still remember telling everyone how good the event was going to be. To come round Roundhay Park, seeing the thousands of people on that bank, then to come into Millennium Square off the front and to hear the roar of the crowd was just amazing.
“That symbolised how far triathlon had come, from being a young lad doing a triathlon on the Yorkshire Moors to having a home World Series that tens of thousands of people came to watch.”
Ever the proud Yorkshireman, Jonny maintains he would not have achieved far more than he ever thought himself possible of, were it not for his home county.
“We wouldn’t have trained at the same level we did without Yorkshire and the people,” he insists. “Whether it was run coaches along the way, whether it was the cyclists who took me into the Dales at the age of 13, or whether it was the genuine belief that if I qualified for the Yorkshire Cross-Country Championships I was one of the best runners in the country because if you could do it in Yorkshire you can do it for everyone.
“Yorkshire gave us the platform.”
And he will continue to train.
“It’s weird. I’m retiring, which for many people is a big thing - you don’t go in on Monday morning,” laughs Jonny. “But chances are on Monday morning I’m going to go for a bike ride.”
He wants to do the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge, compete in the West Yorkshire Cross-Country League like he used to when he was a boy. “Things that are fun,” says Jonny.
He wants to try ultra-marathons, maybe some ski mountaineering. He is not afraid to stand on a startline and be at the back of the pack, learning on the job, pressure-free.
“Me and Alistair were talking about it on the bike today, he said why don’t you try this and this?,” smiles Jonny. “I told him he’s had a head start of a couple of years - ‘I’m not doing anything that you’re better than me at’!”
Together the brothers have introduced over 70,000 kids to triathlon via their Brownlee Foundation that Jonny can now dedicate more time to. As well as that, Jonny wants his legacy to be: “I’d love to pass on the message that everyone out there is good at something; it’s about finding it, working hard and enjoying what you do, because you never know what you can achieve. The only way you can fail is by not giving it your best or not giving it a go at all. I like to think I showed that in my career.”