Current Olympic and World triathlon champion Alex Yee will sensationally switch back to running for the first part of 2025 and target the London Marathon on April 27.
The news was revealed on Monday afternoon UK time by the organisers of the TCS London Marathon.
Yee was a talented runner in his youth and was recording quicker times than four-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Mo Farah at the same age.
And the London Marathon – in his home city – has always held a special place in his heart after he finished on the podium in the Mini London Marathon as a 15-year-old in 2013.
Change of focus for Alex Yee
But the news means he will be taking a step back from triathlon in what is the first year of the next Olympic cycle building to Los Angeles in 2028.
He won’t be the only high-profile triathlete doing that, with a number of short-course stars moving up in distance and potentially targeting the increased opportunities – and prize money – on offer in the T100 and IRONMAN Pro Series.
READ MORE: How to vote for Alex Yee in BBC SPOTY 2024
The qualifying process for LA won’t be directly impacted by 2025 WTCS results and the fact that the Paris Olympic cycle was congested into three years after Tokyo also means many top names might see the coming year as an ideal time to explore new avenues.
London calling for Olympic triathlon king
Announcing the huge news, Alex revealed: “Committing to the TCS London Marathon for me was a no-brainer. It is an event that has given me so many memories. London Marathon day has been such a big part of my life growing up. I remember racing the Mini London Marathon multiple times as a young athlete and it was one of my biggest and most exciting races of the year. Taking part in a full marathon has always been an itch I’ve wanted to scratch and there isn’t any another place than London that I would want to start that journey.
“I will be focusing my training over the coming months on the marathon and am looking forward to seeing what I can do over the 26.2 miles. I am sure that once again the TCS London Marathon will include the best marathon runners from around the world and across the UK and I’m just looking forward to seeing how I fare in their company.”
Yee goes full circle
In 2013, just a year after he watched Alistair Brownlee win Olympic gold in London, Yee was chosen to represent Lewisham at the Mini London Marathon. He covered the three miles in an impressive 15 minutes and 15 seconds for third place.
At that point he trained with Crystal Palace Triathletes and Kent Athletics Club at the Ladywell Arena, which since his Paris heroics has been re-named in his honour.
Within two years his 5000m track time was down to 14:09 and it was sub-14 minutes in 2016 when he was named SportAid’s prestigious One-to-Watch Award winner by Farah following his gold in the ITU World Duathlon Junior Championships and bronze at the Quarteira ETU Triathlon Junior European Cup.
Yee was British champion at 10,000m on the track and ran at that distance at the 2018 European Championships when he was 14th in Berlin. But he then decided to concentrate on his triathlon career and the rest is history.
He qualified ahead of defending men’s champion Alistair Brownlee for the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and went on to win an individual silver before anchoring the Team GB Mixed Relay team to a brilliant gold.
He and arch rival Hayden Wilde were the favourites for gold in Paris this summer and after an epic battle it was Yee who came out on top – and that finish was voted by the public as Team GB’s ‘Moment of the Games’.
Yee is also on the shortlist of six for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, with voting taking place on the night of Tuesday 17 December.
READ MORE: How to vote for Alex Yee in BBC SPOTY 2024
How fast can marathon man Yee go?
The speculation now of course will be what sort of time Yee might be capable of at the 26.2-mile distance, especially without a swim and bike beforehand!
Looking at British Athletics’ ‘Power of 10’ website which logs most of Yee’s competitive runs from under-13 level upwards, his longest race to date is 10,000m / 10km so 42.2km is a massive step up.
Famed for his ultra-smooth running style, Yee’s quickest recorded time for a 10k on the track is 27:51 while in triathlon he clocked exactly 29 minutes in the Paris Test Event in 2023.
READ MORE: What is a good marathon time?
For what it’s worth, if you put 28:00 for a 10k into an age-grading calculator it suggests a 26-year-old male athlete capable of that time would have a predicted 2:08:56 for the marathon.
In terms of comparisons, Farah of course would be the best-known British man in recent years to step up to marathons after excelling at shorter distances. He did the 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic double at both London 2012 and Rio 2016 and announced he was switching from the track to marathons after the 2017 World Championships.
In 2018 Farah came third in the London Marathon in a time of 2:06:22, beating the British record of 2:07:13 and later that year he won the Chicago Marathon in a new European best of 2:05:11, which remains his PB. And more recently Emile Cairess’ fourth-place finish in Paris this summer in a time of 2:07:29 was Team GB’s best in an Olympic marathon for two decades.
Like Yee, Cairess is 26 and has stepped up in distance in recent years. The pair have met earlier in their careers, the last meeting being at the Leeds Varsity 6k Cross-Country in January 2019 when Yee won in a time of 18:07, with Cairess second in 18:39.
Just three seconds separate their 5,000m PBs (Cairess’ is 13:26 to Yee’s 13:29) while Yee’s 27:51 for the 10,000m is 17 seconds off Emile’s best mark, though both of those came in 2022 by which point Yee was fully committed to triathlon.
Cairess has only run three marathons so far – clocking a 2:08:07 on his debut when sixth at London in 2023 and improving that to 2:06:49 when third this year.
It will be fascinating to see how Yee performs on what will be a monumental day for marathon running in the UK as both London and Manchester, with a combined 90,000 participants, will take place on the same day for the first time in recent history.
