Alistair Brownlee - Triathlon Career

Triathlon Career

Brownlee represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the triathlon event, finishing in 12th place and first British competitor. During the 2008 season, his best world cup finish was 3rd place in Madrid and he also won the under-23 world championship.

Brownlee won the 2009 ITU Triathlon World Championship – winning all five of the season's ITU World Championship Series events in which he competed. He was victorious in Madrid, Washington D.C, Kitzbühel and London before winning the 2009 season Grand Final, held on Australia's Gold Coast on 12 September and thereby became the first person ever to win the ITU world Triathlon titles for Junior Men (2006), Under 23 Men (2008) and Senior Men (2009).

During the 2010 off season, Brownlee sustained a stress fracture of the femur and wasn't able to return to competition until June, which made defence of his ITU title almost impossible. He did however mark his return to competitive triathlon with a convincing win in Madrid, followed a month later with the European Triathlon Union (ETU) Championships title. Collapsing with exhaustion at the London race, in late July, meant that despite also going on to win the final race of the 2010 ITU Series, in Budapest, he lost his overall World Championship title to Javier Gómez.

In the April opening event of the 2011 ITU Championship season in Sydney, Brownlee suffered a heavy fall while in the lead which brought early disappointment and a 29th place finish. This was contrasted with outstanding success when, in the space of just twenty-one days during June 2011, Alistair Brownlee convincingly won the next two ITU series events (in Madrid and Kitzbühel) and, following a puncture whilst in the lead and having to make up more than 30 seconds on the new leaders, successfully defended his European title at the 2011 Pontevedra ETU Triathlon European Championships and shared the podium with his brother Jonathan, who took the silver medal. Brownlee won the 2011 ITU world title after winning the Grand Final in Beijing and the gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics on 7 Augustwhile his brother finished in 3rd, taking the bronze medal.

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