Brownlee Racing dominates Supertri Toronto

Belgian Supertri debutant Jolien Vermeylen and Great Britain’s Alex Yee made it a day to remember for the Brownlee Racing squad at Supertri Toronto in Canada, both surging ahead of the field on the day’s final run legs to lay down a marker for the 2025 Supertri League season.

Their victories also made it a winning start for triathlon legend Tim Don at the helm of the Brownlee Racing team, who has recently made the switch from managing Podium Racing.

The women’s event on the shores of Lake Ontario saw the 31-year-old Vermeylen – in her very first Supertri race – outpace the established Supertri forces of France’s Léonie Périault and Cassandre Beaugrand on the final run leg of the day to cross the line first in Toronto.

The Belgian’s margin of victory would be just two seconds over French racer Périault, with Beaugrand six seconds back despite having taken the lead with a kilometre of the run to go. Emma Lombardi and Jeanne Lehair would round out the top five. Taylor-Brown, having raced sparingly in 2025, would finish sixth.

“I didn’t expect that,” said an elated Vermeylen at the finish, having raced on the front foot from the very start of the race. “There are a lot of really good girls on the start line today who really know what they’re doing. After the first stage I wondered if this was a very bad tactic for me, but I’m so happy that the team did well. A huge congratulations to Tim, who made sure everything was in place at the right time.”

ALEX YEE’S WINNING RETURN

In the men’s race, Alex Yee displaying his proven class and awesome footspeed to win ahead of Csongor Lehmann and Vasco Vilaça. Having focussed on the London Marathon for the first half of the 2025 season (producing a 2:11hr marathon in April),

Toronto was the Olympic champion’s first triathlon race of the season – not that he looked rusty with a series of lightning-fast transitions and dominant run leg performances over the chasers.

“It’s nice to be back in the fold,” said Yee at the finish. “I enjoyed that. I wanted to do Supertri because it gave me three opportunities to do a tri and to learn from them very fast. I loved every second of it – it was an amazing crowd at an amazing venue.

I think, like everyone, when you do your first race of the season you worry that you’ve lost it all, but I’ve still got it. It was a nice confidence boost as I was pushed to my limits today.”

The 27-year-old’s comprehensive win was the second of the day for the Brownlee Racing team (now managed by Tim Don), having witnessed Supertri debutant Jolien Vermeylen triumph in the women’s race just ahead of the men’s race. The dark cloud for the team was seeing Jonny Brownlee eliminated from the event for falling into the bottom two on Stage 1. “I think I made every mistake in the book today,” was Brownlee’s honest post-race verdict.

Finishing behind Yee was Hungarian Csongor Lehmann of Stars & Stripes, who hadn’t raced Supertri since Malta in 2019 but put on a thrilling display of swim, bike and run prowess to secure silver. Supertri podium regular Vilaça was third for Crown Racing.

2025 SUPERTRI LEAGUE BREAKDOWN

Supertri’s debut showcase in Canada’s most populated city was the opening event in the four-leg 2025 series. The Toronto route was an open and fast course compared to some of Supertri’s more technical options, with a swim in Ontario Place, before a 200m run to transition via a bridge, before biking and running around Exhibition Place.

The Toronto leg saw a return of the original Supertri Eliminator format, which provides a short break between each of the three 300m swim, 4km bike and 1km run stages, allowing athletes to reset their equipment. The big twist is that the last two athletes to cross the finish line at the end of Stage 1 and 2 were eliminated.

For 2025, the four teams are Brownlee Racing, Crown Racing, Podium Racing and Stars & Stripes Racing.

The Supertri League continues in Chicago, USA, on 23 August, then Jersey in the British Isles on 21 September before Toulouse, France, host the finale on 5 October.