In an Olympic race that was perhaps fundamentally a bit less spectacular than the Olympic women’s race – if only because the roads were now dry and the nasty crashes were therefore omitted – Alex Yee showed his true strength. After actually appearing to be defeated, Yee struck in the last five hundred meters, overtaking Hayden Wilde, and finally running to an epic victory and thus Olympic gold.
During the swim, the field was already fairly broken up and initially a small leading group emerged, which did include some favorites. However, the biggest absentees from that leading group were some of the biggest favorites, including Hayden Wilde, Vasco Vilaca, Morgan Pearson and defending champion Kristian Blummenfelt.
Despite frantic efforts in the leading group, which included Alex Yee and Marten van Riel among others, they did not manage to hold on to the 30-second lead they had. Slowly but surely the chasing group came closer and with about fifteen kilometers to go, both groups melted together. It immediately meant an almost certain all-deciding run.
When the leading group of 32 men entered T1 – and three athletes crashed while doing so – it was not surprising that German Jonas Schomburg had the fastest transition and also started the run first. This did not last long, as Yee had no desire to wait and already placed a devastating acceleration within the first kilometer. In fact, he seemed to decide the race in his favor immediately, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wilde did not like the fact that Yee took off, remained calm and closed the gap in the second kilometer.
Once they were side by side, there were brief hopes for a blood-curdlingly exciting battle, but in fact Wilde proved so strong that the tension disappeared fairly quickly. Already within a few hundred meters he managed to grab a lead of about fifteen seconds and that lead remained the same almost the entire run.
Until the last five hundred meters, when, almost out of nowhere, Yee managed to close the gap and run towards Wilde. With two hundred meters left to the finish, Wilde had no answer to Yee’s acceleration, who therefore ran to the Olympic title. He did so in a time of 1:43:33. Wilde finished second in 1:43:39 and Leo Bergere finished third in 1:43:43 after a beautiful duel with compatriot Pierre le Corre
