Rio Olympics silver medalist Jonny Brownlee will be unable to compete at the inaugural Super League Triathlon on Hamilton Island in Australia, in less than three weeks’ time, due to hip injury.
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$1.5 million dollar Super League Triathlon unveiled
“The doctors confirmed my hip injury, which is really disappointing as I was in full swing preparing for the race and the hot conditions,” he said. “It is sad to miss out on this opportunity, but the great thing about Super League is it’s not just this one event. It’s a series and I believe I can still be in the running to win.”
Super League co-founder Michael D’Hulst explained that the series format allows athletes to make up for not starting in an earlier event. “Points are awarded according to finish position after each event, and these are tallied at the end of the season to decide the series winner. We are rolling out a Double Points Day in our upcoming events and if Jonny does well then, he certainly has a fighting chance at a series win.”
The all-new Super League Triathlon series will feature 23 of the world’s best male triathletes racing for US $1.5 million. Launching this month with a ‘stake-in-the-ground’ event on Hamilton Island, the series will officially continue in October 2017 through to March 2018. The series feature five new format races, each comprising a 300m swim, 6km bike and 2km run, and you can find out more about the formats and how the series works here.
His brother Alistair remains on-track to start at Super League Hamilton Island. “Super League Triathlon is really exciting to me,” said Alistair. “It’s racing across a number of different days, a number of different formats, in different ways, which should suit a really hard style of racing.”
Jonny said: “I will see you at the next race. Super League is not won yet. I will be watching Super League Hamilton Island keenly and if I can’t win it, then I hope Alistair does.”