Potter sends a message to Olympic selectors

Beth Potter proved a point to British Triathlon’s selectors after her Olympic snub, with seventh place at yesterday’s World Series leg in Leeds.

The Glaswegian, 29, was the fourth Briton home in 1:57.20 but she charged through after coming out of the bike stage in 31st.

Maya Kingma of the Netherlands

outsprinted Tokyobound Jess Learmonth for victory in 1:54:26 with fellow Brit Sophie Coldwell third.

But it was Potter’s bestever WTS result, less than four weeks after dropping out of the previous event in Yokohama, and the ranking points justified her decision to opt out of hunting an Olympic 10,000m place in Birmingham on Saturday.

She said: “The higher I get on the World Triathlon rankings, the better starting positions hopefully I'll get on the pontoon. That's how races are won sometimes.”

Alexyeeannouncedhimself as a real contender for Tokyo by winning the men’s race in 1:43.27 with the 23-year-old Londoner finishing 26 seconds clear.

Jonny Brownlee was ninth and Scotsman Grant Sheldon 40th but Alistair Brownlee’s hopes of chasing a third Olympic title in a row now hang by the slimmest of threads after he was disqualified for “unsportsmanlike behaviour” during the swim.

Meanwhile Scottish prospects Cameron Main and Sophia Green both took breakthrough bronzes at the European Cup in Ukraine. Main, 21, was just six seconds behind Azeri race winner Rostislav Pevtsov in the men’s race in Dnipro. While Green, his training partner at Stirling University, was eleven seconds off the pace set by home winner Yuliya Yelistratova.