'I wish the flippin' idiot had paced it right'

September 19, 2016 12:27 PM

Alistair Brownlee helping his brother Jonny over the line after he was close to collapse on the final stretch of the World Triathlon Series in Cozumel, Mexico. Afterwards, Alistair said he would have helped anyone in that position, it's the right thing to do, but added “I wish the flippin' idiot had just paced it right and won the race. He could have jogged the last 2km.”

More on the Brownlee brothers and their epic crazy golf rows.

posted by Helga-woo (23 comments total)

The upcoming lifetime of ribbing is worth far more than any gold medal. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life, Jonny.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:38 PM on September 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

“I wish the flipping idiot had just paced it right and won the race. He could have jogged the last 2km.”


I could totally see myself saying this to one of my brothers. I read it, and I saw it as a small window into brotherhood.

Proper punctuation also includes (gently) smacking said brother upside the head.
posted by dfm500 at 12:43 PM on September 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

Oh yes dfm590! I would carry my sister over the finish line, but I would still reserve the right to call her an idiot.
posted by Helga-woo at 1:04 PM on September 19, 2016

They are adorable- I especially like that he appears to say something like "fucks sake Jonny" before going to help him along.
posted by threetwentytwo at 1:27 PM on September 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Is it within the rules to help other racers? Could you theoretically piggyback someone the last kilometer of a race?
posted by fairmettle at 1:59 PM on September 19, 2016

The ITU rules allow athletes to assist each other, and the news article says a complaint from one of the other competitors was rejected. Although the help rendered appears to go considerably beyond the examples given:

"Athletes competing in the same race may assist each other with incidental items such as, but not restricted to, nutrition and drinks after an aid station and pumps, tubular tires, inner tubes and puncture repair kits;"
posted by grahamparks at 2:07 PM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

The ITU rules allow athletes to assist each other, and the news article says a complaint from one of the other competitors was rejected.

Look, if you can't beat a guy who is carrying another guy, you weren't going to win anyway.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:31 PM on September 19, 2016 [59 favorites]

There have been a lot of great runner assists the last few years. It kind of bothers me that this one involves brothers and they still got 2nd and 3rd. Not really the same as giving up glory to reach a helping hand across national or racial lines.

Plus this is a triathalon, so scoring is across three races. You can make sense of their moves as completely strategic, too, with no altruism necessary. The guy who actually got the gold, Marlo Motta, came in fifth in the race where Jony fell. And Jony got silver, but only because Ali pulled him across the line. Meanwhile, even if he had come in first, Ali still couldn't have medaled. So Ali lost nothing with his assist, and won his brother Jony about $55k.

The Brownlee brothers have been accused of playing as a team before to defeat other racers, which is especially common in biking events where drafting is allowed.

These are all legitimate strategies, sort of. But they make me suspicious of the claim that Alistair would have done it for anybody. He did it for his brother, and in so doing he managed to ensure that the prize money went to his family. If he had kept racing and won 1st, nobody in the Brownlee family would have had gotten top prize money. (The top 35 athletes do get something, but the bigger bonuses are for the top three.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:33 PM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

. Look, if you can't beat a guy who is carrying another guy, you weren't going to win anyway.

That sounds funny, but I am pretty sure they wanted the guy being carried to get disqualified. And it's only "not that big a deal" because Mola managed to win the overall title, I think you'd be seeing a ton more pressure if Jony had been carried to the series title.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 3:40 PM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Plus this is a triathalon, so scoring is across three races.

I'm confused - isn't the person with the best overall time across all three stages the winner of the triathalon?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:57 PM on September 19, 2016

This was the final race of the triathlon world series, which is decided on a league/points system across eight different triathlons held throughout the year.
posted by dng at 5:14 PM on September 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, right - the winner of the series is decided on scoring. And Jony coming in second in this race means that he came in second in the series, whereas his bother had no chance of placing in the series, even if he won that particular race.

I can see why people would be mad.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:17 PM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

If ever real life needed to be realised as a twin-stick videogame....

[granted it's been done!]
posted by comealongpole at 6:03 PM on September 19, 2016

I got a bit curious about the rules (linked above) myself, and 2.1.a.8 seems to clearly ban any assistance from anyone. It's their sport so what do I know but it seemed odd that something like drafting is banned, but literally being carried by another athlete is not.
posted by ftm at 6:30 PM on September 19, 2016

Medals just get dusty on a shelf. A story to razz your brother lasts a lifetime.
posted by cmfletcher at 6:31 PM on September 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's their sport so what do I know but it seemed odd that something like drafting is banned, but literally being carried by another athlete is not.

Drafting isn't banned - in the Elite level races, drafting is permitted (see 5.5).

2.2 deals with outside assistance. Atheletes cannot donate essential equipment to another athelete (eg, you can't give someone else your bike), but the section is silent on atheletes proving bodily support to other atheletes.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:41 PM on September 19, 2016

Scratch that then - shows what I know about ITU rules!
posted by ftm at 6:57 PM on September 19, 2016

Pacing is hard.

You can learn it, and be good at it. But once your relative level of conditioning changes, that training is no longer valid.

You can get a little too excited, or feel a little too pumped and go out faster than what you trained to do. It's less of an issue with a 5k, than, say, a Marathon where you have to really carefully plan the race for not just your conditioning, but how much you sweat, how many calories you manage to take in during the race, etc.

Pacing is hard.
posted by habeebtc at 7:22 PM on September 19, 2016

Pacing is hard. I once got out of a swim race early because I panicked I was going too fast. I was just in better shape than I knew and would have gotten an age group record if I had not freaked out. I'm not sure if that is better or worse than winding up in the hospital with $55k.
posted by dame at 8:24 PM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

I knew without looking (though I did check) that Alistair was a fellow OLDER brother; willingness to help you out if you fuck up but unable to not be a dick about it is kind of in our job description.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:26 PM on September 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yup. Older siblings can be very helpful, but they will always extract a pound of psychic flesh from you for the lack of planning and forethought that led you to need their help in the first place. FOREVERMORE.

By they, I mean me, the oldest and most annoyingly correct at at times.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:55 PM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I fell down a mountain during a 45km cross-country race once and, fool that I was, I clambered to heavily bleeding, badly bruised knees and kept going. I was wondering why, and hurting badly, but I kept going. My running mate cramped up around 30ish kilometres and he struggled to keep going but he wanted it so badly. We'd trained for months. His body was letting him down because marathon is hard and marathon on 1400m of vertical is harder. So there we are, I'm crazy, he's crazy. And I could have left him, because he told me to. He knew how much I wanted to beat cut-off.

But how could you leave a friend up a mountain? I don't think they make a medal of a sufficiently precious metal to make that the right decision. We weren't hurting anyone else by being fools together.

So we stayed together, me bleeding and him limping, and we made it.

We bloody made it. We beat the cut-off by 30 minutes and it was only about 30 minutes longer than we'd thought we'd do. There's footage of us crossing the line and we look like 90 year olds but we're grinning like idiots.

I crossed the line half a metre ahead of him because of the way we were running but the gods smiled on the timing system and his official time is 1 second faster than me. Because that's the right outcome. He was always, and remains, the better runner.

It's the memory of being who I always wanted to be that stays with me.

I salute you, Alistair. I understand and I salute you.
posted by nfalkner at 10:25 PM on September 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

I've also read that part of the reason Alistair spurred his brother on was that the trained medical staff are all at the finish line, so by getting him to keep going Jonny had the medical attention he obviously needed a bit faster. I probably would have done the exact same if I saw my siblings close to collapse in that situation.
posted by fight or flight at 5:27 AM on September 20, 2016