TRIUMPH AGAINST ALL ODDS

Exhausted Yee couldn't believe he had actually won after his thrilling comeback, and says: 'I thought I was second!

- MIKE WALTERS

ALEX YEE was in disbelief after pulling off Team GB's greatest comeback victory in the Olympics since Monday.

With less than a mile to go in the men's triathlon, Britain's gold medal hope looked to be chasing a lost cause with New Zealand's Hayden Wilde holding a 14-second lead and silver seemed to be his inevitable fate.

Yee had swum through the River Seine's murky currents, cycled with purpose past some of the French capital's finest attractions and seen Wilde disappear into the near-distance on the 10,000-metre run.

But out of nowhere, Yee found a second wind and Wilde hit the wall. To gasps of astonishment on Pont Alexandre III, with its gilded bronze statues bathed in sunshine, it was the 26-year-old sports science graduate from Lewisham who appeared first on the blue carpet.

Just as Tom Pidcock had overturned prohibitive odds to win mountain bike gold for Great Britain after puncturing and slipping 40 seconds off the pace 48 hours earlier, Yee's startling late burst defied all logic.

"I didn't even know I could catch him until I caught him," said Yee, a silver medallist in Tokyo three years ago. "It was one of those mad moments where everything just fell into place.