Bunbury triathlete Ryan Bailie finishes 10th in Rio 2016 triathlon

Making his Olympic debut in the field of 55 competitors, Bailie completed the 1.5 kilometre swim in 17 minutes and 31 seconds, seeing him leave the water in 20^th position, 13 seconds behind the leader.

Heading to the bikes, Bailie was hoping for a quick transition to allow him to ride with the lead pack but his helmet had been knocked from its stand and its chin-strap buckled. The time these small problems took to solve, const him contact with the lead group. 

Leading the second group on the road, Bailie rode hard and finished the 40 kilometre ride in just under 58 minutes, rising to 11^th position on the leader board. 

With three laps of the running course ahead of him, Bailie put in a blistering lap one covering three kilometres in just over seven minutes. 

It was obvious that the quick time he was setting was putting the others in his group under pressure. 

The Bunbury athlete had no intentions of backing down and kept pushing the pace hard. His group began to fracture during lap two and fell apart in lap three. 

Bailie was the tenth competitor across the line in a time of 1:47.02, two minutes and one second behind the winner and just 20 seconds behind his Australian teammate Aaron Royle who finished ninth. 

The lead group had been completely dominated by famous British brother Alistair and Jonathon Brownlee who finished first and second. Alistair pipped his brother by just six seconds to become the first Olympic champion to defend a triathlon gold medal. In London 2012, Alistair took the gold while Jonathon won the bronze. 

After the race Bailie said he was disappointed the incident transitioning from the swim to the ride cost him valuable seconds and spent the rest of the race ‘soul searching and managing that pain’.