Yee’s in the doghouse after girlfriend Mathias wins medal
ALEX YEE promised his girlfriend a dog but sold her a pup. All that after English triathlon’s heir to the Brownlee brothers beat his Welsh partner to a gold medal in the mixed relay.
While Yee’s victory alongside Sophie Coldwell, Samuel Dickinson and Georgia TaylorBrown was routine, with Wales and Australia far behind in silver and bronze respectively, greater unpredictability came from entertaining exchanges around the interview area. That was when it transpired Yee had apparently told his girlfriend of six years, Olivia Mathias, that the time would be right to get a Labrador if they both made the podium here for their opposing nations. As Mathias explained: ‘I’m pretty sure we had a deal that if Wales got a medal we could get one, but he’s backtracking.’ Yee, a winner again two days after taking the individual gold medal, was having none of it, which drew scepticism from Coldwell. ‘I didn’t shake on that — I haven’t backtracked,’ Yee said. ‘Maybe after the Paris Olympics.’
Yee was imperious on Friday in chasing down and beating New Zealand’s Olympic bronze medallist Hayden Wilde, and he crushed the same elite-level competitor on the first leg of this relay on a shortened course by 20 seconds. Coldwell extended the lead over second place to 27sec, before it was cut to 16sec on Dickinson’s watch, with Mathias’s Welsh quartet giving chase. Taylor-Brown, second for England in the individual, sped away on the run for a 46sec win.