Jonny Brownlee: We need more quality triathlon in UK

by John Cushing, September 2026

One of the brothers who changed the sport of triathlon in the UK is calling for more world class Tri events in the country 

Jonny Brownlee, the Olympic gold, silver and bronze medalist, World and Commonwealth champion has confirmed he’s stepping away from elite competition after nearly 20 years swimming, cycling and running, but as we look ahead to the future has told our Great British Bosses podcast series, the sport he loves needs a little further push.

“Long term British Triathlon is in a really good place we've got lots of good athletes coming through and the bottom of their pyramid is is absolutely massive so as long as we keep developing those athletes the right way. I think if i'm honest though we need some more racing in the UK. We do have a London World Series now but it's not quite hit the heights of the Leeds World Series when it was or the Hyde Park World Series, so if we want to keep that conveyor belt of athletes going forward we need some more to really have good quality domestic racing.”

Jonny doesn’t think they’ll be another set of ‘superpower’ brothers like him and Alistair in the sport anytime soon and admits when Ali retired he missed him.

“When Alistair stopped the Olympic stuff after Rio, you know, I felt quite lonely. I felt like something was missing. And one of my biggest regrets in my career is not being able to perform at my best without Alistair there as well. So I think a lot of that was because I kind of lost that superpower.
We lost that dominance over other people. A lot of people were already beaten if there was two of us on the start line. One because we were a team and secondly because they kind of, they realised that if one of us was on a bad day, one of us was going to still be on a good day. So they're never going to beat us both.”

Jonny is not leaving the sport. He will continue working with the Brownlee foundation set up with Ali to help the youngsters of Yorkshire - 100,000 and counting so far. And he’s extending his relationship with Supertri and fronting Enduro, a new race format in which he will also compete at Supertri events around the world.

For more listen to the podcast in full

And as Michael says at the end of the podcast “on a personal note as someone that once uttered the words if Yorkshire was a country on the radio in 2012 and didn't realise how that would take off and how it would change my life, thank you very much to you, your brother all your team around you for what was a fantastic career to be able to commentate on and report on. So thank you very much and all the very best with what comes next!”