Olympic Distance, Men

The men’s competition contained some quality triathletes all with a great chance of capturing the gold medal, and with Spain’s Javier Gómez, winner of the 2013, 2014 and 2015 World Triathlon Series out of the Games following a minor bike crash the month before the start of the Olympics, it gave extra hope to the other contestants. Spain’s Mario Mola was the in-form man going into Rio. He had won four of the seven World Series events in 2016, including the Hamburg race, the last before Rio. Alistair Brownlee had two World Series wins under his belt leading up to the Games and was confident of retaining his Olympic title.

However, after the opening swim in Rio, the first ever from a beach start in Olympic history, Slovakia’s Richard Varga held a two second lead over Igor Polyansky of Russia, while Polyansky’s brother Dmitry, third in the 2012 World Triathlon Series, was lying in fourth place. The fancied Brownlee brothers were well placed in sixth and ninth, with Jonny slightly ahead of his older sibling.

The contest was building into a close contest after the cycle ride. With transition time added at the end of the ride, six men started the final 10km run within two seconds of each other with Varga, Jonny Brownlee, and France’s 2015 World Series bronze medalist Vincent Luis all at 1h 13m 51s, just one second ahead of Alistair Brownlee, Marten Van Riel of Belgium and South Africa’s Henri Schoeman.

After the first lap of the 10km run, the Brownlees occupied the first two places with Luis third, but the Frenchman soon dropped back and finished seventh. The Brownlee brothers dominated the race after pulling away before the end of the first lap and in the end, Alistair beat Jonny by six seconds, while South Africa’s Henri Schoeman took the bronze medal, 42 seconds behind the winner, and seven seconds ahead of his compatriot Richard Murray (who nearly produced one of the greatest triathlon comebacks of all time when he came within a whisker of winning a medal despite going into the final leg nearly 90 seconds behind). For Schoeman, it was the first podium finish of his career and he had the distinction of being the first African triathlete to win an Olympic medal.

But the lasting memory of a magnificent men’s contest was the two British brothers lying side-by-side on the ground after crossing the finishing line congratulating each other as they improved on their 2012 performance of gold and bronze, which they had now upgraded to gold and silver, with Alistair becoming the first triathlete to win back-to-back Olympic golds.