After sitting in 14th after the first leg completed by Vicky Holland, Great Britain had to come from behind the entire race, but William Clarke and Non Stanford helped them edge back before Brownlee took the lead in dramatic fashion on the first lap of the bike and stormed home to help his team win in an overall time of 1 hour 26min 48sec.

France's team of Jessica Harrison, Tony Moulai, Carole Peon and Vincent Luis claimed silver 10 seconds behind, while Russia's Irina Abysova, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Alexandra Razarenova and Alexander Bryukhankov claimed bronze.

Brownlee was the only member of the team have been part of the squad from last year's world title victory in Lausanne amd he hopes that the thrilling nature of Britain's victory will help the campaign to get it onto the Olympic programme at Rio 2016.

Jonathan Brownlee celebrates Britain's World Championships victory in Stockholm with team-mates Vicky Holland and Non Stanford

"It's a very exciting event to take part of," said Brownlee, who yesterday won the ITU World Series event in the Swedish capital to go top of the rankings.

"It would be great if we could get into the Olympics as well. 

"It is very exciting, it changes so much throughout the whole race and it's good to watch.

"It's great to be part of the Team GB again, to only have two World Relay Championships and to be part of both of them is pretty cool, hopefully I can keep it going."

Sweden's Lisa Norden and the Netherlands Maaike Caelers led out the first leg and put their teams in front at the first changeover.

They were followed by Japan, Germany's first team, France and Spain, with Britain back in 14th place after Holland's first leg.

The swim played a pivotal role in the second leg, while the lead Norden gave to Per Wangel meant he exited the water first, he was followed quickly by Italy's Alessandro Fabian, Moulai, Hungary's Akos Vanek, Spain's Fernando Alarza and New Zealand's Kris Gemmell.

Together they formed a tight lead pack of six, but it was Fabian, Moulai and Germany's Gregor Buchholz who took the upper hand on the run and handed off to Annamaria Mazzetti, Carole Peon and Anne Haug.

Just behind them though was Clarke and Polyanskiy, who put Stanford and Razeranova within touch of the leaders.

The wet conditions in Stockholm made it difficult for every competitor at the Mixed Relay World Championships

At the start of the third leg it was Spain's Caroline Routier who came out with the best swim, taking Spain from sixth to first out of the water.

Routier, Haug and Peon then formed a small break off the front, before Haug powered off into the lead and time-trialled most of the six kilometres bike and then ran solo for the two kiloemtres to hand off to Steffen Justus who was the German team's anchor.

Behind Haug though, Stanford was running through the field to put Britain in second heading into the final leg, although Brownlee started with a 28-second deficit.

But Brownlee halved that gap over the 300 metres swim and coming out of transition he and Luis, who had bridged up from fifth to third after the swim, were within sight of Justus.

Then just a few hundred metres out of  the first transition, the German slipped going around a corner and had to watch as Brownlee and Luis and then Russia's Bryukhankov rode past him.

He then started riding with Germany's second team member Franz Loeschke, but slipped again not long after to fall out of medal contention.

Brownlee went hard from the second transition and said that was his strategy to shake off Luis, who finished strongly for France, to put them into silver.  

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