It’s a finish which will go down in Olympic history. In triathlon history.
But how did Alex Yee find those hidden reserves to conjure an triathlon gold medal at Paris 2024?
His arch rival Hayden Wilde looked to have the race in the bag with literally just a kilometre to go, as Yee seemed set to repeat his individual silver from Tokyo – though that was far from certain with a dual-pronged home challenge just in behind.
But then, in a matter of strides the race was transformed. Wilde was suddenly treading water and Yee was doing very much the opposite.
In what seemed an instant, he closed down what had been a 14-second gap at the end of the third of four run laps and surged past Wilde with around 400 metres to go.
There was no response from the Kiwi as Yee went on to follow fellow Brit Alistair Brownlee into Olympic immortality.
‘I was in quite a bad place’
And afterwards, speaking to Eurosport, he said: “I just have so much respect for Hayden and how much he made me dig for that, fair play to him. He’s an amazing athlete and for me, almost two laps in, I probably thought maybe silver’s on the cards.”
Yee had been to the fore throughout – higher up in the swim than Wilde and then working on the bike to try and maintain the front group’s gap to the pack containing Wilde and Tokyo Olympic champion Kristian Blummenfelt.
But it all came back together on the run and Yee wondered if he might pay the price.
He explained: “I was in quite a bad place. I really wanted to do a swim, bike and run. Maybe I did a bit too much swimming and biking today. That meant that the run was really hard and I gave it everything I had.”
‘One last chance’ for Alex Yee
In a jaw-dropping finale he was somehow able to turn the race on its head and talking through that process, he explained: “Many people have told me, ‘you’re going to go through a bad patch in a race, no matter how perfect or bad it is’. So I think for me, I just rode that wave and said, one more try and let’s see if we can do it.
“I owed it to myself to give myself one last chance. And with about 2k to go, I thought I’d just give everything I had – I was saying ‘anything can happen’.
“I’m still just that normal guy who works hard at my sport and loves what I’m doing.
“I’m just so proud that I was able to [do this] for my family, for everyone who’s worked hard, my girlfriend Liv and so many more people than just me that have worked towards this.
“And, you know, this was our dream and I’m the lucky one that gets to do it.”
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