Tokyo Olympics: Jonny Brownlee believes triathlon heir Alex Yee will be man to beat

The 31-year-old came up 30 seconds short of a third medal at the Games and 49 seconds shy of completing the set having won silver in London and bronze in Rio.

Is this the end of Brownlee junior’s Olympic distance career? Perhaps, with his participation in the World Series Grand Final in Edmonton next month far from certain.

Whatever happens the Team GB stalwart will leave the discipline with no regrets.

“I told myself last night that all I could do was try my hardest,” said Brownlee. “I did everything I could, I got ready for the heat, I’ve trained as hard as I can.

“I’ve been very, very fortunate to have two medals at two Olympic Games. It’s hard to turn up and perform. Now I’ve performed well in three Games, although it wasn’t quite enough to get three medals.

“It came down to 18 months of preparation on the run and that’s what I had.”

On Yee, who deservedly finished second, he said: “Alex has got the ability to dominate the sport now.

“People are going to need to work hard to beat him, because if they’re not careful he’s going to win lots and lots of races.”

Brownlee had waited five years for another Olympic chance but needed to hold on a further five minutes after a farcical false start, in which a camera boat obstructed him.

There was a familiar sight in the shape of the Yorkshire star emerging from the 1,500m swim in a prominent position, just ten seconds behind leader Vincent Luis.

Brownlee was in a leading group of nine with a flimsy 14-second advantage coming out of transition, soon reeled in by the likes of Yee putting in costly peloton turns in the Tokyo heat.

He held on to his place at the front of the race for the first 4km of the run but Yee and eventual gold medallist Kristian Blummenfelt of Norway proved impossible to catch.

“If there hadn’t been that early break I might have been able to sneak in,2 he added. “But I gave it absolutely everything, trained as hard as I could, race as hard as I could and raced as smartly as I could.”

Brownlee is entered for the Edmonton season finale but there’s a good chance his next swim, bike, run race is over half-Ironman distance. Alistair’s transition to the ultimate challenge began in 2019 with a debut at the World Championships in Kona, that gave his brother a few pointers on future plans.

“This is definitely my last Olympics, I’ll go to long distance racing,” he said. “I enjoy different challenges, different places and different training and look forward to that that for a couple of years.

“I watched Alistair [Brownlee] do Kona and that put me off Ironman, because it seemed a long way!”

This isn’t quite the end of Jonny Brownlee at the Olympics. He will join Yee and two of Jess Learmonth, Georgia Taylor-Brown and Vicky Holland in Saturday’s mixed relay.

“We’ve got a strong team and I want to get a good medal,” he said.

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