Alex Yee sealed his second gold of these Commonwealth Games as he put Team England into a lead they never conceded in the mixed team triathlon relay.
Yee, who had won the individual gold in Sutton Park earlier in the week, said the team’s tactics had been to “leave it all out there”. And again he showed himself to be the best runner among the elite men as he pulled out a 20-second lead for Sophie Coldwell on the second leg.
Coldwell, who had agonisingly finished just outside the medals in fourth place in the individual, admitted in the moment of transition she had felt the pressure of maintaining that advantage and not letting another medal chance slip away. But she then proceeded to double it with an excellent 300metre swim, 5kilometre run and 2km run.
Potentially, the weak link in the English line-up was on leg three in Sam Dickinson, called into the quartet after Jonny Brownlee was ruled out with a broken elbow sustained in a crash caused by Hayden Wilde in the World Series event in Leeds earlier this summer.
Dickinson looked strong on the swim and bike to keep his advantage despite a group of Wales, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia working together to close the gap.
With pain etched all over his face in the latter stages of the run, he still handed over to individual silver medallist Georgia Taylor-Brown with a 16s advantage.
Taylor-Brown stretched that to 24s following a rapid swim and extended it further still on two wheels. In her head-to-head for gold against Flora Duffy in the individual, she had complained afterwards she simply didn’t have the legs to go with her rival from Bermuda.
In the team event, it was entirely different story as she scorched over the 2km to cross the finishing line a full minute clear. Afterwards, she said: “It was still really hard, it wasn’t easy but I told myself it’s 20 minutes and I can do anything for 20 minutes.”
And Non Stanford, in her last season as a professional triathlete, outsprinted the chasing pack to take silver for Wales.
It also meant a silver for Olivia Mathias and a potentially awkward conversation with her boyfriend Yee.
After the race, Mathias said a deal had been done whereby the couple would get a labrador under certain circumstances post-Birmingham 2022. Following her silver, she said: “I’m pretty sure we had a deal that if Wales got a medal we could get one.”
But Yee’s version of events were somewhat different, insisted he hadn’t shaken on it and he’d revisit the dog discussion after the Paris Olympics.
England had already picked up two further golds earlier in the day in the Para races as Katie Crowhurst and David Ellis won their respective races.
It was redemption of sorts for Ellis who had suffered a broken bike chain at the Paralympics in Tokyo while Crowhurst is a newcomer to the sport taking up open water swimming, cycling and running when her local swimming pool closed because of Covid.
