Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee executed a 1-2 finish to earn England’s first triathlon medals in the Commonwealth Games. Richard Murray rounded out the podium with a bronze which was South Africa’s first triathlon medal at this quadrennial sporting festival for members of the old British Empire.

The Brownlees (18:00 and 17:58 swim splits), along with South African Henri Schoeman (17:54 swim), swam off the front in the Strathclyde Loch and took a solid lead into transition. As the trio took off ahead on the bike, Scotland’s Marc Austin (18:01 swim split) surged to join them in an attempt to break away from the main chase pack.

Schoeman, however, quickly lost touch as he overshot a left hand turn and flew into a course fence. The Brownlees pushed ahead to seize the opportunity to open a gap on their chief rivals while young Austin hung on for dear life with the Olympic medalists.

By the end of the second lap on the tough, hilly bike course, the Brownlees and Austin opened a lead of over a minute. At that time, super cyclist/domestíque Tom Davison of New Zealand made up for a slow swim, caught the chasers and went to work on the front trying to cut the gap but made no more inroads on the Brownlees with a 3rd-best 59:03 bike split.

On the penultimate lap of the bike, the Brownlees jettisoned Austin, who faded back to the chasers (59:57 bike split), and took a solid lead into the run.

While recovering from off season injuries, Alistair Brownlee has been off form and off the podiums until the most recent World Triathlon Series round at Hamburg, where he resumed his usual position at the front of the pack. Alistair showed no weakness on this day as well as he broke free of brother Jonny from the start of the run and raced to a comfortable lead.

The Olympic gold medalist made good on his mission to make this his goal race of the season. With an unassailable lead, Alistair slowed to collect an English flag and a flag of his home town of Leeds to celebrate a race-best run split of 31:09 and a winning finish time of 1:48:50. Jonny was next with a 31:21 run which put him 11 seconds behind his brother at the line. After a slow swim and a decent bike split left him 1:11 behind at T2, Richard Murray unleashed a 3rd-fastest 31:35 run to finish 3rd, 1:20 behind Jonny Brownlee.

Commonwealth Games
Glasgow, Scotland
July 24, 2014
S 1.5k / B 40k / R 10k

Results

Men

1. Alistair Brownlee (ENG) 1:48:50
2. Jonathan Brownlee (ENG) 1:49:01
3. Richard Murray (RSA) 1:50:21
4. Andrew Yorke (CAN) 1:50:40
5. Ryan Bailie (AUS) 1:50:43
6. Aaron Harris (ENG) 1:50:49
7. David McNamee (SCO) 1:50:59
8. Aaron Royle (AUS) 1:51:03
9. Dan Wilson (AUS) 1:51:36
10. Tony Dodds (NZL) 1:51:58