While Britain's Brownlee brothers dominated Saturday's ITU triathlon world championship series in Madrid yesterday, New Zealander James Elvery showed promise to finish 15th in testing conditions.
The Aucklander emerged from the water in touch with the leaders and quickly settled into his work on the bike.
The lead bunch immediatelyput time on the chasing packs, with New Zealanders Ryan Sissons (19th), Clark Ellice (23rd) and Tony Dodds (36th) all losing time on the leaders during the 40km ride.
Elvery, now ranked 12th in the world, stopped the watches at one hour, 53 minutes 44 seconds, well over two minutes down on Alistair Brownlee.
New Zealander Kris Gemmell didn't recover after losing almost a minute during the swim, eventually finishing 54th. Both Gemmell and Sissons were caught up in what looked more like a heavyweight title fight with a couple of dozen contenders in the ring together at the first buoy.
Sissons and Ellice made up plenty of time on the run, 22-year-old Sissons improving from 35th off the bike to climb into the top 20 with a 31min 19sec split and maintain his strong start to the season.
Ellice also ran home well in 31min 25sec to finish 23rd after exiting the bike in 57th place.
Alistair Brownlee ran 30min 08sec for the final 10km, eventually winning in 1hr 51min 06sec, three seconds clear of brother Jonathan.
Spain's Javier Gomez took third in 2hr 51min 51sec.
