Alistair Brownlee was done with the Olympics – Now he is ready to win in Tokyo
According to Reuters Peter Hall “Alistair Brownlee was done with the Olympics. Having won triathlon gold in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro four years later, Tokyo, even with the event delayed by a year, felt too much for a man who had switched his focus to longer events”.
However, the Olympic appeal, regardless of how troublesome it will be for this triathlon legend to qualify for this summer’s sporting show-stopper, has proven to be compelling.
“It definitely wasn’t the plan to do Olympic distance triathlon again,” Brownlee told Reuters. “I was pretty sure that 2016 was going to be my last year of shorter distance racing. After 2018 I wanted to completely move on.”
“I had basically four or five years of injury after injury. I was fed up. I was pretty close to retiring, from the long distance as well. Injuries are the one thing that really make me struggle with motivation.
“But then something happened. I started to feel better again. My training was going really well. My body got really healthy,” he added.
“I thought I’d train as hard as I could for four or five months, throw everything at it, and if I qualify it would be amazing to go to the Olympics again.”
After the 2016, the double Olympic champion certainly did move on putting hours into Ironman Distance training, writing a new book and undertaking the up-and-coming challenge of a ‘SUB-7 hour’ Ironman. This new focus meant Alistair had fallen down the pecking order for Olympic selection although he understands why saying “You’d think it is much easier racing for two hours compared to the eight in Ironman, but it isn’t,” he says. “In fact, shorter distance is the harder form of racing.” The fact he is chasing a third successive gold count for nothing.
Currently Team GB do not know it they have two-or-three-men’s Olympic slots up for grabs and one of those spots in the men’s selection has already been bagged by his brother Jonny. Whilst Alistair remains in contention, so do Alex Yee, Tom Bishop and Gordon Benson and the final men’s spot will not be finalised until the middle of 2021. Much may depend on British Triathlon aims to qualify a third male spot through events early in 2021.
It may appear to many that qualification is a bit of a tall order but it would be fool-hardy to write Alistair off. In his last World Cup race in Valencia, last November the ‘selection radar’ was echoing loud and clear as the Double Olympic Gold Medalist was within a whisker of beating the World Champion and favourite for the Gold at the Olympics, Vincent Luis.
If there was ever a time for Alistair Brownlee to let the British selectors know they were wrong to omit the Double Olympic Gold Medalist from the provisional British triathlon team for the Tokyo Olympics that race, was it. Mike Cavendish, the team leader of GB Triathlon said prior to this race that Alistair Brownlee remained in contention for a place in the team saying “A fully fit and firing Alistair Brownlee will undoubtedly be on our radar when we get to making final selections next year.”
Alistair told Reuters, “I’m committed to being in the best possible shape and be ready to win in Tokyo.”
The odds are stacked against him, but that has never stopped Alistair Brownlee before.
