Jonny Brownlee suggests he may compete at Paris Olympics

Yorkshire ace Jonny Brownlee may not be done with triathlon at the Olympics after all...

Published: August 20, 2021 at 8:51 am

Tokyo 2020 was due to be Jonny Brownlee's last shot at the Olympics, but in an article on the Metro the three-time Olympic medallist has suggested he may yet make a bid to race at Paris 2024.

The news comes less than a month after his his fifth-place finish in the individual Olympic triathlon event and a gold medal in the mixed relay at Tokyo 2020.

Writing in the Metro, Jonny said: "During the run in the relay in Japan, I was thinking: ‘These are your last two kilometres at an Olympics, give it everything’, and I felt absolutely brilliant.

"I looked at the result sheet and went ‘wow’. The relay distance really shouldn’t come so easy to me but afterwards I was definitely thinking ‘could I have done better than fifth in the individual race’ and ‘what about Paris 2024?’"

The Yorkshire ace explained that he needed the feeling of Tokyo being his last Olympics to get him in the right frame of mind, but he now admits "maybe I'm better than I think I am".

Despite the strange nature of these Games taking place during a pandemic, Jonny says there's no getting away from his love of racing at the Olympics, but he plans to spend the next year "racing for the love of it", including Super League, some 70.3 Ironman events and possibly some Olympic-distance events.

"Paris then obviously enters your mind and it is only three years’ away, although a Games is always a project of a couple of years," he wrote.

"Now I have to think about if Paris 2024 is something I seriously want to consider."

Image credit: World Triathlon