Alex Yee hauled himself back from the brink of defeat to the most famous of Olympic Games gold medals on Wednesday, with a little help from his boyhood idol.
Yee had appeared set for defeat on the streets of Paris when he trailed great New Zealand rival Hayden Wilde by 14 seconds with just one 2.5km lap of the closing run leg to go. It appeared the 26-year-old Yee had no answers to Wilde’s unrelenting pace.
But then, according to BBC Olympics presenter Clare Balding, he heard a voice in the crowd. It was the man he himself had watched claim Olympic gold in London back in 2012 – a certain Alistair Brownlee. The two-time Olympic king provided a simple message of hope, and a message that this race might not be over yet.
It was a message which spurred Yee on to find one final surge to haul in and pass Wilde in the closing stages to become Olympic champion in the most dramatic of circumstances. A sporting moment for the ages.
Alistair Brownlee’s message to Yee
Balding, speaking on the BBC on Wednesday evening, recounted the moment as she explained: “There was one voice in the crowd that Alex Yee heard. 2.5k to go and he’s really struggling – at that stage it almost looked like he’d get caught for silver. He hears the voice of Alistair Brownlee.
“And Alistair Brownlee, obviously double gold medallist in this and his mentor, very much his inspiration and also his training partner up in Yorkshire, Alistair Brownlee said: ‘Anything can happen mate, anything can still happen’.
“And suddenly, Alex Yee takes off, and this is when he overtook Hayden Wilde. And you wonder exactly where Alistair Brownlee was. We talked in here about the effects of the crowd, but the effect of just one voice as well. And indeed that immense French crowd, and suddenly Yee finds a power and a strength within him that he didn’t know he had. It was extraordinary.”
Wednesday morning in Paris will forever go down in triathlon history for the drama it provided, and this just adds another mind-blowing twist to give it further enduring resonance.
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