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Alex Yee is determined to burnish the Brownlee brothers’ triathlon legacy and keep the good times rolling for Team GB.
Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics without a Brownlee since Athens 2004 after Alistair’s Olympic distance retirement and Jonny’s narrow failure to earn selection for the Games.
Yee heads to the French capital as the man to beat having won last year’s Test Event and fully aware that he is now GB’s undisputed main man in the swim, bike and run.
“I wouldn’t say the baton has passed on to me, but I feel a responsibility now that sadly, Jonny isn’t here,” said the 26-year-old.
“We’ve got to keep their legacy living on. We’ve got such a rich heritage in British triathlon, and I’d love to keep that going. For me, watching the Olympics and then being able to be on a team with some of those guys, I hope I can do a similar thing with somebody in a few years’ time. That’s how the cycle goes and I’m really looking forward to the next few years with that enjoyment of people supporting me.”
All three Tokyo medallists return here, with reigning champion Kristian Blummenfelt of Norway attempting a devilishly difficult step back down from Ironman to Olympic distance.
Yee and Kiwi ‘frenemy’ Hayden Wilde have shared a number of close battles in recent years, their rivalry emerging from a trend that sees triathlons increasingly decided on the running leg. But this is far from a two-horse race, with the host nation able to field the last two world champions in Leo Bergere and Dorian Coninx.
“I think it’s going to be a hard race from the gun,” said Yee. “It’ll be a triathlon, for sure, and the current is going to play a big role. It’s incredibly strong under the water.
“People are going to make the race hard and some people won’t want to leave it to a run race and other people will. I’ll do my best to be at the front throughout and be competitive the whole way through.”
Yee is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing them to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support – which has been vital on their pathway to the Paris 2024 Games.
Yee will be joined in the men’s race by Sam Dickinson, who beat Brownlee to the second spot. The all-important selection policy that came down in Dickinson’s favour states that if athletes are not individual medal contenders, they will be considered on their strength as a contributor to the mixed relay and also their potential as a pilot.
In that scenario, as he did successfully at May’s World Series race in Cagliari, Dickinson would race as a domestique and ride tactically to advance Yee’s interests.
“Without wanting to share all of our secrets, I have my own specific race plan which works in conjunction with Alex,” said Dickinson.
Issues with the water quality in the River Seine and the potential for the race to be reduced to a duathlon have dominated the build-up.
Yee, Dickinson, and the Team GB’s three outstanding women - world champion Beth Potter, Tokyo gold medallist Georgia Taylor-Brown and bolter Kate Waugh - were all grilled on the prospect in pre-race interviews.
But for them, this is absolutely nothing new.
“We haven’t done anything differently for this race,” said Taylor-Brown. “After the races, we’ll be washed down by doctors with a kind of pink solution that they use in hospitals.
“We’ll use mouthwash straight away to clear everything out and probably peptobismol to line our stomachs… pre and probiotics we’ve been taking.”
“We race in terrible water quality all the time and people are getting sick, but that’s the situation the world is in.
“I know that measures are being taken and we’ve been doing our own things for years. Sometimes we’ll be swimming and we can see oil from ships in the water in front of us. So, we’re used to it and that isn’t a good thing, but things won’t change until more money is put into it.”
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