On a quite astonishing morning in Tokyo, Alex Yee so nearly swam, cycled and ran to Britain's first gold medal of these Olympics, only to see a burly Norwegian in his rear view mirror. Kristian Blummenfelt was meant to shrink and disappear across 10km of blue carpet, but it just didn't happen. That breakaway never looked enough for Salvisberg, and for Brownlee the worry was that he had no advantage over Yee. Yee, an international standard 10k runner with a formidable personal best of 27 minutes and 51 seconds, took control after just a few hundred metres of the first of four loops. Going into the final lap we suddenly had a shootout between Yee and Blummenfelt.

Source: The Nation July 26, 2021 00:00 UTC