RUNBELIEVABLE

Alex hails 'mad' dash to incredible gold

- MIKE WALTERS

ALEX YEE was in disbelief after pulling off Team GB’s greatest comeback win in Olympic history – since Monday.

With less than a mile to go in the men’s triathlon, Britain’s gold medal hope looked to be chasing a lost cause, with New Zealand’s Hayden Wilde holding a 14-second lead, and silver seemed to be Yee’s inevitable fate.

He swam through the River Seine’s murky currents, cycled with purpose past some of the French capital’s most photogenic attractions and seen Wilde disappear into the near distance on the 10,000m run.

But out of nowhere, Yee found a second wind and Wilde hit the wall. To gasps of astonishment on Pont Alexandre III, with its gilded bronze statues bathed in sunshine, it was the 26-year-old sports science graduate from Lewisham who appeared first on the blue carpet.

Just as Tom Pidcock had overturned prohibitive odds to win mountain bike gold for Great Britain after puncturing and slipping 40 seconds off the pace 48 hours earlier, Yee’s startling late burst defied all logic.