Africa Triathlon

Jonathan Brownlee has successfully defended his ITU Elite Sprint Triathlon World Championship and claimed his first Dextro Energy Triathlon Series race win in a brilliant day for the Brownlee brothers in Lausanne.

While Jonathan held off Javier Gomez to second to claim the second elite sprint world title in history, Alistair Brownlee’s third placed finish was enough for him to take the lead in the overall 2011 ITU World Championship rankings in the penultimate series round.

The results in Lausanne mean that Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee will wear No.1 and No.2 respectively in the Beijing Grand Final in September, and that the men’s 2011 ITU World Championship is one step closer to ending up in the Brownlee household.

In the end, it was Jonathan Brownlee’s day in Lausanne though, as he turned in a blistering 14 minute, 24 second run spilt to fend off Gomez over the 750m swim, 20km bike and 5km run.

The short swim didn’t do much to separate the field, but a quick transition helped a group of 14 that included Jonathan Brownlee, Alistair Brownlee, Javier Gomez, Alexander Brukhankov, Sven Riederer, David Hauss, Frederic Belaubre and up and coming Namibian athlete Abrahm Louw. But before the end of the bike the other chase group of 15 caught the leaders, to bring about 30 athletes into T2 before the 5km run.

The Brownlees, Gomez, Riederer and Brukhankov moved to the front quickly and about two kilometres in, Gomez and Jonathan Brownlee made the decisive break. In a thrilling final kilometre, Gomez tried to turn on the pace and get away, but Brownlee stuck to his heels and then sprinted away to finish with a run split of 14 minutes, 24seconds, almost 40 seconds faster than his run split in Lausanne last year, and his second elite sprint world title. Jonathan Brownlee’s winning time was 52 minutes, 23seconds, five seconds ahead of Gomez.

Alistair Brownlee finished third, Hauss fourth, Brukhankov fifth, Laurent Vidal sixth, ahead of Jonathan Zipf, Joao Silva, Christian Prochnow and Tony Moulai rounding out the top ten. Brad Kahlefeldt was the first non-European athlete in 11th place.