Hot favourite Gwen Jorgensen produced the perfect race to win the Olympic women’s triathlon gold yesterday, the American unusually staying with her rivals on the bike before surging clear of defending champion Nicola Spirig-Hug on the run.

Jorgensen has dominated the swim-bike-run sport over the last two years but usually wins her races by chasing down the stronger bikers during the 10km run.

Yesterday, however, she gave as good as she got on the hilly 40km bike course and broke the challenge of 34-year-old Spirig-Hug on the run to win America’s first gold in the sport since it was introduced to the Games in 2000.

Switzerland’s Spirig-Hug, who has had a baby since her photo-finish victory in London, held on to take silver and become the first woman to win two Olympic medals in the sport.

British team-mates Non Stanford and Vicky Holland, who live and train together in Leeds and are great friends, battled it out for bronze, with Holland just taking it.

Jorgensen’s victory, following Briton Alistair Brownlee’s successful defence of the men’s title, means that the sport’s reputation for upset Olympic champions has been firmly put to bed.

It was also a long overdue gold for the country that invented the sport after the United States had previously managed only Susan Williams’s bronze in 2004 since it joined the Olympic party in 2000.

Four years ago, Spirig-Hug dipped Sweden’s Lisa Norden in a photo-finish but this time she was comfortably clear of the fast-finishing British duo, with Holland collecting the country’s third triathlon medal of the Games following the Brownlee brothers’ 1-2 in the men’s race.

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