Alex Yee, the Londoner who won the triathlon gold medal at Paris Olympics decided to fulfill a childhood dream when he entered to compete at the London Marathon on Sunday. But he said he endured more “dark moments” on his 42.195 km run debut than during his Olympic triathlon-title in Paris.
He still declared it an experience of a lifetime, after ending 14th amongst elite athletes and second amongst British athletes, behind Maha met Mahamet.
The 27-year-old Londoner completed the race in two hours, 11 minutes and eight seconds. “It was seriously tough,” said Yee, “but probably one of the best moments in my life. Just the feeling of everyone, that experience, I can’t really put into words. The experience of running into London, the crowds,” he said of the highs.
However it was a testing run. “Definitely a lot more dark moments, I’d say, more than Paris, today. Once I got to 32, 33k there’s a lot of pain there. My legs are cramping and I just had to keep fighting through that. And yeah, (I’m) pretty proud to get to the finish line,” he added.
Yee told the media he has a “hard reset” in February, when he returns to triathlon ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “Hopefully I will evolve as a person, as an athlete. I wanted to do that in a unique way. I wanted to do this race all my life, the opportunity fell to do it, and I couldn’t say no,” he said of the effort less than a year after winning Olympic gold in the triathlon.
“It was was probably one of the best experiences of my life if I’m being honest. I expected the crowd to be good but they were another level. I am so proud to have completed the marathon,” he reiterated.
“An amazing experience but it was hard at the end. I am just proud to have done it. Emotions about time will come afterwards, but the main thing for me today was to enjoy it, do something unknown and embrace it. I did that to my best of my ability. I feel like I gave 100%
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This is bigger than running. It’s an amazing day and I wanted to be a part of it. This was the perfect opportunity.”
There is curiosity over whether he will go easy on the three event triathlon for the more soul nourishing marathons. “Definitely not,” he told BBC. “I am still hoping for LA Olympics. This is just an experiment really to help me improve my run. I’ve worked hard over the years to improve my bike and swim to get to that level so it’s nice to be able to work on this now,” he said.
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