Gold medalist Alistair Brownlee (right) hugs his brother, Jonathan (left), who won bronze. Photo / Mark Mitchell
With a Union Flag draped across his shoulders, Alistair Brownlee slowed to walking pace as he crossed the triathlon finishing line in Hyde Park.
Yet if the elder brother's victory elicited deafening roars of delight from crowds in London and his native Leeds, the arrival half a minute later of
Jonathan Brownlee to snatch bronze, despite a 15-second penalty for a minor infringement of the rules, was greeted with equal if not greater fervour.
"To get two of us - two brothers - two British brothers on the podium, you couldn't ask for any more," said Alistair, 24, as Jonathan, two years his junior, was led away in a wheelchair to the resuscitation area after collapsing at the race's climax.
The Brownlees, the hugely popular sons of two doctors from Bramhope in Leeds, look set to become Britain's most famous sporting siblings since Bobby and Jack Charlton and further boost the popularity of one of the world's fastest growing pursuits.
Hundreds of thousands of fans had taken to the streets of London to cheer them on while hundreds more gathered around big screens and crammed into the brothers' local pub in Yorkshire to watch the drama unfold.
