Jonathan Brownlee returns to the top of the podium with convincing victory

Jonathan Brownlee returned to the top of the podium with a convincing victory on Saturday at the 2015 ITU World Triathlon Gold Coast, delivering back to back wins in the Series. Brownlee showed his masterclass, rallying the lead group on the bike to set himself up with the winning break he needed, stopping the clock at 1:46:53 and earning his tenth WTS win.

But importantly, it was his first time winning consecutive World Triathlon Series titles since taking Yokohama and Madrid back in 2013.

“At the start of the season I had an awful race, it was a little bit of a shock really because I got a lot of things wrong so I knew I did not want to make those mistakes again. Today it started really well, had a great start in the swim, had to get around a few people to get on Richard Varga’s feet and then we had a gap, I saw the four of us and knew I just had to ride aggressive and on tempo,” said Brownlee. “On my run I knew that if I could be steady and get them behind me by 30 (seconds) then it was going to take a great run to catch me but luckily they didn’t.”

In a near replay of the 2009 ITU World Championships Junior Men’s final, Spain’s Mario Mola claimed the second spot on the podium, with the fastest run split of the day (29.44). In 2009, it had been Mola who took the junior men’s world title from Brownlee.

Under partly cloudy skies but temperate conditions, two-laps of a 1.5km swim was led out by the familiar figure of Richard Varga (SVK). Right on the heels of Varga however was Brownlee, who from the start established his role as the conductor —pushing the group of four from the start and making sure they worked together to keep the pace on for the majority of the eight-lap technical course. The group of four also included Igor Polyanskiy and Dmitry Polyanskiy (RUS).

The leaders remained a group of four until the start of the sixth lap when Igor Polyanskiy (RUS) was forced to bow out of race contention when he rounded a sharp corner and bent his front bike wheel, nearly taking down Brownlee with him. The others in the front pack were able to prevail into the second transition as a threesome, but they lost the sizable lead they had built up when they had been four.

Behind the leaders two different chase groups had formed to create a large company that was led by Richard Murray (RSA), Benjamin Shaw (IRL), Ben Kanute (USA), Kristian Blummenfelt (NOR), Brendan Sexton (AUS) Gomez and Ryan Bailie (AUS). While at one point they were down by almost a minute, impressive efforts to close the gap allowed them to enter the run with only a 21-second deficit, putting ample pressure on the three leaders that started the run alone.

It was a battle for the last two podium positions as a group of Spaniards including Mola, Gomez and Vicente Hernandez separated themselves on the run in order to get a chance at joining Brownlee. Capitalizing on any amount of space he could get, Mola seized a small lead over his compatriots in the last lap to earn himself the silver medal and his second time on the podium this year after winning Abu Dhabi.