Swim team honoured after helping Alex Yee turn a weakness into a strength on way to Olympic glory

Awards season is in full swing at the end of the triathlon season and a relatively unheralded group of people helped triathlon scoop a major honour at this week’s PLx Awards.

The PLx Awards brought together the Team GB Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community to celebrate the amazing success in Paris.

And the British Triathlon ‘team’ of Adam Elliott, Laura Needham, Oli Freeman, Hannah Brookes, Phil Clayton, Emma Moscrop, George Robinson, Matt Croyle and Ben Bright were given the ‘Collaboration & Teamwork Award’.

That “recognises a team that has collaborated or worked together to deliver a significant impact, improving high-performance in their field” with their endeavours playing a significant part in helping Alex Yee win gold in an epic men’s individual race at the Olympics.

Turning a weakness into a strength

The tribute read as follows: “British Triathlon created a team to ensure Alex Yee’s performance in Paris could be the best to win gold.

“The focus was on helping Alex improve his swimming, his weakest discipline and no stone was left unturned by the support team, embedding psychology at the heart of it all.”

Also on the shortlist were British Rowing’s Olympic and Paralympic Teams as well as British Equestrian’s teams from both Games.

On receiving the award, Adam Elliott, Alex Yee’s coach, said; “It was not the most enjoyable race to watch!

“We were all driven by Alex; we looked at Paris a long way out and asked what he needed and who could do it?

“Part of the strength of this team is knowing what we don’t know as well as what we do know, and being able to ask who can do this better than we can, and then finding those people.

“[It was] great to have been able to pull in those from across the system, like Emma from Aquatics GB and the brilliant swimming coaching of Phil Clayton.”

Rivals recognise the hard work

And it all made a fundamental difference.

Runner-up to Kristian Blummenfelt at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Yee had come out of the water five seconds behind the Norwegian there – but in Paris he was 23 seconds ahead and ‘Big Blu’ would never get in the mix as Yee, Hayden Wilde and Leo Bergere battled for the medals.

Blummenfelt’s coach Olav Aleksander Bu spoke to us here at TRI247 recently about what went wrong for his man in Paris – and was quick to highlight the work of Yee’s team, saying it reminded him of what the Norwegians had done in Tokyo.

He told us: “How they prepared [the Team GB training camp was in Libourne, chosen for its river currents] for that was even something we discussed, but there was not the willingness to do that.

“And that’s where I just have to say hats off to Alex and the work they did there. It was a masterclass. It is exactly how it should be done.”