THE QUEST FOR GLORY
THE OLYMPICS. THE IRONMAN WORLDS. POSSIBLY THE 70.3 TITLE. 2020 MARKS THE BIGGEST YEAR IN ALI BROWNLEE’S STORIED CAREER. IN A 220 EXCLUSIVE, HE TALKS UP HIS CHANCES OF AN UNPRECEDENTED FEAT…
With Tokyo and Kona on his rader in 2020, we caught up with Ali Brownlee before his biggest year in tri to date
Alistair Brownlee is a two-time Olympic champion and the only athlete to ever retain an Olympic triathlon title. He’s also the guy who “crawled” along the Queen K in the Ironman World Championships last year, trailed in 44th in his one World Triathlon Series outing in front of a home crowd in Leeds, and got shown a clean pair of heels by a Norwegian upstart in his ongoing quest for a first Ironman 70.3 World Championship crown.
Yet the 31-year-old sits across the table with a cup of tea – having finished wind-tunnel testing in the high-tech surroundings of the TotalSim engineering hub in Silverstone – and explains how he plans to go full throttle for the unprecedented challenge of winning both the Olympic Games and the Ironman World Championships in 2020. (We suggest that given it’s not until late November in New Zealand, he might as well have another stab at that elusive 70.3 world crown too.) Brownlee hasn’t won a World Series race since 2017 in Leeds, his only WTS victory of an Olympic cycle in which Spain’s three-time world champion Mario Mola has stood atop the podium on nine occasions. But to some extent – and how much we shall see as this intriguing year plays out – this is a case of damn lies and statistics, because injury has kept the Yorkshireman sidelined for long periods post-Rio, he’s put more focus on non-drafting formats, and 2019 wasn’t quite the disaster it appears above.
“Last year I raced everything, from an ITU World Cup sprint, to Olympic distance, to half and full Ironman – and won at every distance. I think that’s quite cool,” he says. In fact, it’s more than cool, it’s unprecedented. For all the versatility of the likes of Spain’s Javier Gomez or Switzerland’s Nicola Spirig, no triathlete has previously topped elite podiums in all four formats in the same calendar year.
Brownlee’s Ironman win in Western Australia in December also resulted in stopping the clock at
7:45:21, a small slice of redemption after his combustion in Kona. It showed he’s getting to grips with the distance, and it earnt him a guaranteed return to Hawaii, but more of that later.
ALL TO PLAY FOR
First, potentially, comes Tokyo in July, the lure of a fourth Olympic Games and this time two medals with the additional prospect of the team mixed relay. “I’ll try to qualify,” he says. “This time last year I wasn’t going to go to the Olympics. I’d had a couple of years of injuries and I didn’t think it was possible. In the year since, I’ve been injury-free and done a bit of racing in all different formats.
“Two things have made the difference: having confidence in my body and enjoying the training has been important; and the second thing is a change in attitude. I would’ve previously said I’d only go to the Olympics if I could be competitive to win, whereas now I’m saying I’ll take one step at a time. I need to put myself in a position to qualify first and then get to the start line.”
Although Brownlee would be 32, it’s still a year younger than Hamish Carter when the Kiwi won in Athens in 2004, and two years junior to Kate Allen, who represented Austria at the same Games and is the oldest women’s Olympic triathlon champion. However, even if the mind and body are refreshed, Tokyo still presents a course and conditions that, at facevalue, suit Brownlee less than previous attempts. If Beijing 2008 came a year too early in his development, then London’s cool temperatures and vociferous home crowd, and Rio’s kicker of a hill that had to be climbed eight times on the bike leg, played into his hands. The Tokyo city course is flat and proved so hot and humid that the women’s run leg was halved for the 2019 test event. This summer’s races have already been moved twice to earlier time slots in the scheduling.
‘Pasty brothers from Yorkshire cannot cope in the heat’ is a hackneyed appraisal, but the Brownlees and extreme temperatures have tended to go together like oil and water. While Alistair was famously stricken on a hot day in Hyde Park in 2010, and suffered on his first trip to the lava fields on the Big Island in October, he even more memorably aided his brother Jonny over the line in Cozumel in 2016, winning plaudits for sportsmanship across the world. Undeterred though, he believes Tokyo’s predicted conditions could work to his advantage.
“Every challenge brings opportunity,” he says. “I could say heat doesn’t suit me, or I could say: ‘Well, it makes it a really hard two-hour race and grinds everyone down, so it’s not a really quick running race like it was in London [2012]’. That would be a worst-case scenario. This is an opportunity to get it really right in the heat.”
Brownlee running away from the opposition straight out of transition used to be a regular sight. Close to his best, in a 10km track race at Stanford University in 2013 he ran 28:32mins and hinted at trying to qualify for the England team for the Commonwealth Games. That pure footspeed will be hard to rediscover. As Brownlee has changed as an athlete, so has triathlon evolved. Not necessarily to be faster, but with more depth. Now Mola, French world champion Vincent
“TWO THINGS HAVE MADE THE DIFFERENCE: HAVING CONFIDENCE IN MY BODY AND ENJOYING THE TRAINING HAS BEEN IMPORTANT; AND THE SECOND THING IS A CHANGE IN ATTITUDE. I WOULD’VE PREVIOUSLY SAID I’D ONLY GO TO THE OLYMPICS IF I COULD BE COMPETITIVE TO WIN, WHEREAS NOW I’M SAYING I’LL TAKE ONE STEP AT A TIME”
Luis, Australia’s Jake Birtwhistle, Britain’s Alex Yee or almost anyone can emerge from the pack – there were seven different winners in the eight WTS races last year, and the Tokyo test event produced a completely different podium as well.
TWO LARGE ASTERISKS
If Brownlee makes the Games, his best chance of success rests on the race being as hard as possible and being part of as small a front group as possible – probably including brother Jonny – into T2. While it has always been the tactic, it now might be a necessity. This race is as wide open as any Olympic tri in recent times.
There are two rather large asterisks, though. Firstly, that Brownlee can prove his worth to Team GB, and secondly, that there’s even a starting berth for him, because currently Britain’s men only hold two of a potential three spots in the individual competition.
Despite Britain’s women being blessed with an inordinate depth of talent, with six triathletes in the requisite top 30 of the Olympic qualification rankings, the men only have Jonny Brownlee in 11th. Going into 2020, Yee sits in 32nd and Tom Bishop in 37th, and having not raced enough ITU events, Alistair is too far back to have an impact. Athletes compete to win spots for their nation, not individually, so Alistair is looking to Bishop and Yee racing well in early summer to secure the places, before selectors make a final decision at the end of May.
Much rests on Bishop, who remains in contention himself, and has committed to racing the first WTS event in Abu Dhabi before chasing points in World Cup races in Mooloolaba, Australia and New Plymouth, New Zealand, before heading to WTS Bermuda.
“A lot of British males have their eye on that third spot,” 28-year-old Bishop says. “I’m not denying it would be tough if it doesn’t work out, but I’m harsh on myself. If I don’t perform how I want, I don’t deserve to go, even though I might qualify the spot.
“I genuinely think I can be good enough to make the team, but it will just be a very tough team to make, and it all depends on how Alistair can turn himself around, how Alex holds up and if Ben [Dijkstra], Sam [Dickinson] and Gordon [Benson] can lift their level as well. It’s all to play for.”
Brownlee is confident the British men will gain their full quota for the Olympics. “I’ve talked to the powers that be and there seems to be a pretty good plan in place,” he reveals. As for his own plans. “Before June there are two fairly warm Olympic-distance races, Bermuda and Yokohama. I must race well in one or both of those and show what I can do, and if it goes well, great, it’ll be full steam to the Olympics, and if it doesn’t, I’ll be doing long-distance stuff.”
“THAT’S SPORT”
With no designated selection race, it’ll come down to the discretion of the selectors under performance director Mike Cavendish. While Jonny Brownlee didn’t have a vintage season in 2019, winning just one WTS race in Edmonton, he remains by a distance Britain’s most consistent male performer. While understands that British Triathlon has nominated triathletes for
pre-selection, it refuses to say who, yet the double-Olympic medallist must be a certainty barring illness or injury.
Yee is also likely to go. While understandably inconsistent at just 21, he possesses a devastating turn of pace that makes him an intriguing prospect for future honours. Another Leeds-based athlete, he finished second in Abu Dhabi in 2019 and has a speedy 27:51 10km result to his name after winning the British 10km champs in 2018. If it comes down to a straight running race, Yee is an obvious threat.
While it might seem harsh on triathletes to win the points and see the place awarded elsewhere, as Bishop says, “that’s sport”. In the past two Olympics, Britain has deployed pilots in Stuart
Hayes and Benson – support athletes to try and help the Brownlees make the podium – and winning qualification points could be seen as an extension of this.
POSITIVE THINKING
If the Olympics do work out for Brownlee Senior there will be 69 days from the mixed relay in Tokyo to then get it right for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, something that, to many observers, he spectacularly failed to do in 2019, trailing in 21st with a 3:13hr marathon. Brownlee doesn’t see it quite like that. “I feel I wasn’t as far off as it might have looked,” he says, “and without doing much more training in Australia I was already a lot better, and that was only the third Ironman I’d ever attempted.”
The performance in Ironman Western Australia in the city of Busselton, with its 19th-century, wooden-piled beachfront jetty, was certainly an impressive statement. Brownlee swam 3.8km in 46:29, biked 180km in 4:10:32 and then ran a 2:43:39 marathon to win by more than 10mins in 7:45:21, among the fastest times ever. And while course accuracy and conditions make time comparisons contentious, there’s a sense he’s getting to grips with the challenges of longdistance racing, particularly when it comes to fuelling.
“One of the great things about long distance is that it’s kicked me out of my comfort zone,” Brownlee says. “You think you know about nutrition, but do you? What should you change? What should you do differently? It’s questioning a lot of those things. At Olympic distance, nutrition isn’t that important. In Ironman, it’s everything. If you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’ll be crawling along the road.
“I don’t know entirely what it was in Hawaii, but a lot went wrong [Brownlee also punctured and had to change a wheel midway through the bike leg]. I don’t think the nutrition was great… and I was crawling along the road. But in Australia I got it absolutely right and until the last 10km of that race I thought I could keep going all day.
“What’s made the difference in doing Ironman well ,” Brownlee continues, “is dialling in a very strict strategy of what I’m going to eat when, and how much I’m taking on board, knowing how many grammes of carbohydrate and salt I need per hour
and how much water, and making it a really simple equation.”
FACING FRODO AGAIN
The change in qualifying format for last year’s Kona, from a points-based system to a ‘win a race and you’re in’ approach, has made the unlikely Olympic-Hawaii double possible, but it would still be an immense achievement. Gomez, who ticked off his own Ironman qualification in Malaysia, also has an outside shot at it, although the five-time ITU world champion is no longer the dominant force he once was over Olympic distance, and his one appearance in Hawaii in 2018 was underwhelming and saw him return to short-course racing.
The most obvious challenge is likely to come from the three-time Hawaii winner and reigning champion, Jan Frodeno, Brownlee’s sparring partner in his early ITU days and for much of the bike ride in Kona last year – it’s a rivalry that has led to a few spicy altercations. “It was a super impressive race,” Brownlee says of Frodeno’s new course record time, 7:51:13. “He looked in control the whole race. That said, I think I’ve got room for improvement and can get pretty close.”
And after that? With the Ironman 70.3 World Championships rotating annually, it’ll land in Taupo on New Zealand’s north island this year in November. Having finished runner-up behind Frodeno in a titanic tussle in 2018 and Norway’s Gustav Iden last year, there remains unfinished business, but… “One step at a time,” Brownlee reminds us. “My head is telling me that to attempt all three of those goals is maybe a bit much. But my heart says, ‘We’ll see’.”
“WHAT’S MADE THE DIFFERENCE IN DOING IRONMAN WELL IS DIALLING IN A VERY STRICT STRATEGY OF WHAT I’M GOING TO EAT WHEN AND HOW MUCH I’M TAKING ON BOARD, KNOWING HOW MANY GRAMMES OF CARBOHYDRATE AND SALT I NEED PER HOUR AND HOW MUCH WATER, AND MAKING IT A REALLY SIMPLE EQUATION”