Alistair Brownlee raised Great Britain's hopes of a medal in the Olympic men's triathlon event today when he briefly held the lead at the start of the final running leg.

The 20-year-old Brownlee was in front of the leading group but was overhauled by eventual winner Jan Frodeno of Germany, Simon Whitfield of Canada, Bevan Docherty of New Zealand and Francisco Javier of Spain.

Frodeno went on to take the gold medal with a finishing burst over 200m to give him a winning time of 1:48:53. Brownlee finished 12th on his Olympic debut in 1:50:19.

Will Clarke, the 23-year-old from Loughborough, finished 14th in 1:50:32 while Tim Don, tenth in the Sydney Games and 18th in Athens, was withdrawn by race officials with 100m left of his cycle ride. It was believed that officials had removed Don on safety grounds because the running sector was already in progress.

Don had competed after suffering sickness for two days at the end of last week and started because he believed had had recovered fitness.

Afterwards Brownlee said he was gutted not to have won medal.