Category: Athletics

• ‘It just feels really right and I’m really happy with it’
• Brownlees helped make Britain dominant in sport

The double Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee has announced his retirement. The 36-year-old Briton became the first triathlete to successfully defend his Olympic title when he retained the title in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, four years after triumphing on home soil at London in 2012.

“It’s time to close this chapter … This marks my transition from professional triathlon, a moment approached with both dread and excitement in equal measure,” Brownlee, whose first significant title came in winning the 2006 Junior European Duathlon, wrote on social media.

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• Tatyana Tomashova loses London 2012 1500m silver
• Russian banned for retrospective doping offences

The London 2012 race regarded as one of the dirtiest in history has expunged yet another name from the record books after Tatyana Tomashova was stripped of her women’s Olympic 1500m silver medal. The Russian becomes the fifth out of 12 finishers in the final to be disqualified for retrospective doping offences.

The race was questioned almost immediately with Britain’s Lisa Dobriskey telling the BBC straight after the race: “I’ll probably get into trouble for saying this, but I don’t believe I’m competing on a level playing field.” History, though, has slowly proven Dobriskey correct.

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Britain’s greatest shot putter who twice won the World’s Strongest Man competition

Standing close to 6ft 6in and weighing more than 26st in his athletic prime, Geoff Capes was a mighty figure who commanded international respect as a record-breaking shot putter, and later achieved even greater renown as a sporting personality through appearances in televised strongman competitions. Twice he won the accolade of being World’s Strongest Man, as well as achieving serial successes in Highland Games events.

Although Capes, who has died aged 75, never fulfilled his ambition of winning an Olympic medal, despite competing in three Games, with a best finish of fifth in 1980, he had an illustrious career, winning a Commonwealth gold medal in 1974 and 1978, and twice claiming the European indoor title, in 1974 and 1976. He would represent his country on a record 67 occasions between 1969 and his retirement from athletics 11 years later, when he chose to concentrate on paid competition. He achieved a lifetime best shot put distance of 21.68m in his final competition, in 1980, for a national record that still stands.

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