Gomez drops Jonny Brownlee on the run to clinch gold in Cape Town

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After sticking close to Britain’s Jonny Brownlee for much of yesterday’s WTS race in Cape Town, reigning world champ Javier Gomez showed a lethal turn of pace to drop his British rival halfway through the run, striding comfortably to gold with a 19secs gap.

In a close echo of the season’s opening race in Auckland earlier this month, the two men put in a solid swim and quickly found themselves in the lead pack on the bike, breaking off once they hit the run to see whose legs would last longest. This time though, Gomez made a decisive move in the third lap and Brownlee couldn’t match it.

“The run, I didn’t feel very fresh I think we all were pretty tired,” said Gomez post-race. “I had heavy legs but I just went as hard as I could on that third lap and I could make this little gap with Jonathan and luckily I could commit. I just didn’t look back and went as hard as I could.”

Brownlee said he was “even more impressed this time” with his rival’s performance, adding: “I thought I would change it up a bit but every time he went for it, I kind of counter-attacked and then he counter-attacked again and dropped me. It’s as simple as that. He was very impressive today.”

The podium was rounded out by Russia’s Dmitry Polyanskiy who was part of the lead pack on the bike, and ran hard enough to keep clear of the two strongest runners from the chase pack, Mario Mola (ESP) and Richard Murray (RSA), who took fourth and fifth places respectively.

With these latest results, Javier Gomez sits at the top of the WTS leaderboard with 1600 points, followed by Jonny Brownlee with 1480 points. Australia’s Aaron Royle is in third place with 1227 points, and Mario Mola is in fourth place with 1097 points. Yet to record any points is Jonny’s older brother Alistair Brownlee, who was forced to sit out Cape Town with a calf strain.

In the women’s race the previous day, Britain’s Jodie Stimpson also recorded a back-to-back win, beating teammate Helen Jenkins to gold in a thrilling race which also saw the USA’s Gwen Jorgensen make up a deficit of nearly 2mins on the run to claim third.

The next WTS race will be held in Yokohama, Japan on 17-18 May, followed by WTS London at the end of May.