Yorkshire puddings help Brownlees to batter rivals (From Ilkley Gazette)

Yorkshire puddings help Brownlees to batter rivals

12:22pm Thursday 9th August 2012 in Sport

Alistair Brownlee has revealed a diet of Yorkshire puddings and pies helped him become the men's Olympic triathlon champion.

Brownlee had time to walk across the finish line draped in a Union flag as he easily won gold in one of the Olympics' most gruelling sports in Hyde Park yesterday.

With his brother Jonny not far behind in third they became the first British siblings to stand on the same Olympic podium for more than a century.

Yesterday the brothers, who have shared a house in Bramhope for the past three years, revealed one of the more unlikely recipes to their record-breaking success .

“I’ll eat all sorts of stodgy food like pies, Yorkshire puddings, fish and chips – all of that,”Alistair said. “I don't mind a pizza also.”

Jonny, added: “Normally after a race I have a bit of pizza. With our diet we can pretty much eat anything and lots of it because we train 35 hours each week so we burn it all off.”

The Brownlees’ success continued a run of medals by athletes from Yorkshire, where there has been much mirth in pointing out they had, after Tuesday’s triathlon, won more gold medals than Australia.

With tongue firmly in cheek proud Yorkshireman Alistair Brownlee even claimed he would prefer to represent the White Rose, rather than Great Britain, at an Olympics.

“It would be fantastic to compete for Yorkshire,” the 24-year-old said.

“I’'m proud to be British. I’m not forgetting the fact that I’m British but it would be even better to enter as Yorkshire.

“We’d have to find a good third man from Yorkshire though and we'd need the funding too.

“Yorkshire men are notoriously not that good with funding things so I might struggle.”

His brother, two years his junior, believes Yorkshire's success can be attributed to the natural training facilities in the county.

“It's a beautiful place to train," he said.

"We love training because we can train in some beautiful areas like the Yorkshire Dales and hills. “