LET’S SAVE LIVES
Alistair: Sport not important
NEVER has Yorkshire felt more like home sweet home for double Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee.
Britain’s star triathlete was 5,000 miles away at a training camp on Monday when Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab instructed travellers to “come home now while you still can”.
Brownlee, in the US with brother Jonny, was in a preOlympic bubble, chasing his dream in water and on land, just as he had before winning gold at London 2012 and Rio 2016.
With Olympic chiefs insisting no decision on the Tokyo Games would be taken for another month, the pair ploughed on.
Even concerns that Alistair had come too close for comfort to a coronavirus hotspot, when competing in Spain this month, could not derail the 31-year-old
– but the
Olympic postponement announced on Tuesday came at just the right time.
Brownlee said: “Jonny and I were in New Mexico training when the call was made.
“When we heard it was off, coupled with the Foreign Office advice to get home quick, we scrambled. It wasn’t easy to get a flight and we started to stress.
“Fortunately we made it back. Another month would have made things a hell of a lot worse. Inevitably people would be taking risks with their health to train, and increasing the likelihood of being exposed to the virus.
“In fairness to the IOC, the situation is changing so fast. What is going on today seemed inconceivable two weeks ago.”
Now out of harm’s way, Brownlee has hunkered down at his Yorkshire home to begin selfisolating and make sure he has not brought anything unwanted back with him.
“This pandemic is so much bigger and more serious
than sport,” he said.
“The Olympics is a massive event but this is a time not to focus on sport too much, to take the foot off the gas and do what’s best for everyone by making sure you don’t spread the virus.
“We can talk all day about whether or not an Olympics in three months’ time would have spread it more or not. Ultimately, we don’t know.
“But when so many people are losing their lives, or are very close to losing their lives, we have to make a priority of saving lives.
“Every resource that can possibly fight this virus must be used to do that.”
Brownlee admits that competing in the Punta Umbria Duathlon in Spain earlier this month left him “obviously worried”, given how the coronavirus crisis has since escalated in that country.
“I haven’t shown any symptoms so, in terms of actually contracting it, I think I’m fairly safe,” he said.
“But I’m going to make an effort to be as isolated as I can for a while just to make sure I don’t develop any.”