Alistair Brownlee made an incredible return from injury in Cape Town as he was victorious in his first WTS race of the season, capping off a perfect weekend for British Triathlon as Vicky Holland was also victorious in the women’s race.

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Brownlee’s performance was dominant as he surged away from old rival Javier Gomez Noya with a mile of the run to go, showing no signs of an athlete who was unable to compete in the first three WTS races of the season due to injury.

As in the women’s race yesterday the swim was shortened to 750m due to the very chilly 11c water temperature. Defending title holder from Cape Town 2014 Javier Gomez Noya (ESP) set a blistering pace and was first out of the water, closely followed by the only British entrant and Olympic champion Brownlee, competing in his first World Series race since winning the WTS Grand Final in Edmonton last year.

A huge peloton formed early on the bike course, the shortened swim lending itself an advantage to the weaker swimmers as over half of the 66 competitors found themselves in the lead group.

Whilst the women avoided crashes on the previous day despite a similarly large peloton the men weren’t so lucky, with Lucas Siska (SVK) taking a nasty fall at almost full speed with less than 10km of the bike gone. Lawrence Fanous (JOR) was also caught up in the melee. All the major pre-race favourites including Brownlee, Gomez, Mario Mola (ESP) and Cape Town local Richard Murray (RSA) stayed out of trouble and continued to sit comfortably in the lead group.

With less than half of the bike leg to go the chasing pack merged with the leaders, creating an extraordinarily large number of almost 60 riders at the front, a sight more akin to the Tour de France as opposed to ITU racing.