The London 2012 Olympic champion had been absent for the first three World Triathlon Series races due to an ankle problem, leaving his brother Jonathan to take full advantage by winning the previous two legs in Auckland, New Zealand and the Gold Coast, Australia.

With Jonathan not participating in Cape Town, Alistair picked up the mantle for the Brownlee family and the British team, who were hoping to leave South Africa with both the men's and women’s titles, following Vicky Holland’s victory yesterday.

Bad weather conditions saw a shortened swim the men’s race, which kept the majority of the field together, despite Spain’s Javier Gómez, last year's overall winner, leading the race after the first discipline.

Although a breakaway led the race for the first two laps of the bike section, they were hauled back by the chasing group, with the majority of the athletes remaining in contention as the 10km run approached.

Following the final transition home favourite Richard Murray, Spain’s Fernando Alarza, Vincent Luis and Pierre Le Corre of France joined Gómez and Brownlee in a lead group of six, which set about pulling themselves away from the field.

Le Corre, Alarza and Luis were unable to sustain their early efforts and dropped out of contention, with Brownlee, whose run is so often his forte, showing no ill effects from a trip on the second lap of the run to move away from his remaining rivals in the final 2km to take the victory in 1 hour 39 min 19sec.

“Of course you never know, all you can do is train as hard as you can and put everything in that you can on the day,” Brownlee said afterwards.

“I knew I wasn't that fit and I didn't have good legs in that first lap to be honest.

“The whole thing was tough, but I'm so glad to have the win,”

Gómez finished five seconds adrift of the winner, in a result that moves him to the top of the Series rankings on 2,707 ahead of compatriots Mario Mola and Alarza, with the absent Jonathan Brownlee slipping from first to fourth.

Luis completed the podium in Cape Town after recovering from his blip on the run to earn third ahead of Murray in 1:39.28, despite the home crowd’s best efforts to roar the South African to a podium finish.

April 2015:  Holland returns from injury to take maiden World Triathlon Series victory
April 2015:  Jorgensen and Brownlee storm to victories at World Triathlon Series in Gold Coast
March 2015:  Jorgensen claims 10th World Triathlon Series win with victory in Auckland
March 2015:  Mola and Jorgensen seeking further wins as World Triathlon Series visits Auckland
March 2015:  Jorgensen and Mola claim season opening World Triathlon Series spoils