Alex Yee won Olympic gold for Team GB in the men’s triathlon with an epic comeback to beat New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde.
Yee was trailing Wilde by 14 seconds at the start of the last lap and was being pursued hard by France’s duo of Pierre Le Corre and Leo Bergere.
But as Bergere pushed to close the 15-second ga on Yee, the Brit produced a late surge of his own to hunt down Wilde and overtake him in the final few hundred metres.
After winning silver in the triathlon in Tokyo, Yee has now gone one step better with his gold medal in Paris and was immediately congratulated by Wilde as they shared a hug by the finish line.
Speaking after winning his silver medal, Wilde gave a special mention to his New Zealand teammate, Dylan McCullough, who finished 19th but was part of the lead group during the cycling before he dropped back to create a slipstream for Wilde to catch up before the 10km run.
‘I just want to, first off, say a massive thank you to Dylan McCullough. If it wasn’t for him coming back, I wouldn’t have done that,’ Wilde told Sky. ‘He saved me a lot of energy on the bike.’
Wilde also said he was ‘stoked’ to see Yee win gold.
‘Just a great race overall. I missed out on the end, but we recover now and try to get another medal,’ Wilde said.
‘I looked back and there was a gap and he looked composed. It was hot, so that might have been an effect but I gave it everything, and I’m stoked for Alex as well.
‘Just to have an even race, no penalties, just a pure, good foot race, and it was exciting.’
Meanwhile, New Zealand coach, Craig Kirkwood, admitted after the race that his team were ‘pretty confident’ that Wilde could beat Yee.
‘Alex has definitely got weaknesses, so we tried to exploit those,’ Kirkwood told RNZ.
‘I thought he’d got [it] right today but just unlucky to not hold on.’
Asked how he found the energy for the late surge to overtake Wilde, Yee said: ‘I don’t even know. I was in quite a bad place to be fair. I was going through a really bad patch.
‘For me, I rode that wave and just said one more try and let’s see if I can do it. I didn’t give up.
‘Almost two laps in I thought silver was on the cards. I owed it to myself to give myself one last chance and with about 2k to go I thought I’d give it everything I had.’
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