Which is why it is particularly incongruous to encounter this slim, track-suited figure in the traditional Fleet Street watering hole of Ye Olde Cock Tavern, where he has just been a guest at the Sports Journalists’ Association lunch.

Brownlee is polite and pleasant, and on occasions disarmingly funny and honest. But something is nagging at him, and that face is not entirely at ease.

While other triathletes have travelled to warmer climes such as South Africa, Australia or New Zealand during Britain’s winter months, this Yorkshireman has always preferred to stay at home, running and cycling in rain and - for a good part of the winter just gone - snow.

But he maintains that approach has been modified by the injury he suffered earlier this year when what he thought for a while was just a stiff left hip was diagnosed as a femoral stress fracture. His snowbound winter at home, in which he also took part in local fell races, is now looking like a little too much of a risk.

As he prepares for the scan which will tell him how soon he can return to competition this year after a season in which he won five out of five races in the Dextro Energy series to become the only athlete to complete the set of junior, under-23 and senior ITU world titles, Brownlee has become a little more pragmatic.

"In future I’ve got to find a healthy balance," he says. "Staying at home all winter may be a bit extreme. I think in future I might have a week or two away, somewhere not too far like Spain, just maybe somewhere easier if the weather is really bad again. If it looks like its going to carry on I can just go away for a week and come back.

"I love training at home, and that’s mainly who I am, but if you can find a kind of compromise and a balance, that’s probably the best way to go."

Not that Brownlee (pictured) is certain the snowy and icy conditions where responsible for the frustrating hiatus he is now experiencing.

"You try to pinpoint the potential reasons that caused the injury," he adds. "But the only thing you can really pinpoint is that maybe you were fatigued, and training a bit more than normal. Also the snow - snow being on the ground in Leeds for a month, that is a possibility. But you are clutching at straws a bit. You try to come up with a reason even though there might not be one.

"I rationalise it as something that you almost deserve, because you are pushing it and you push it a bit too far. You push it a bit too far and you do really well, and for that same reason you push it a bit too far and maybe then you’re just pushing your luck. It is a fine line when you are an elite athlete."

Although Brownlee has already written off the possibility of performing in either of the first two events of the seven -  in Sydney on April 11 and Seoul on May 8 - he has targeted London’s leg of the series, the Hyde Park event on July 25 over the course that will form the basis of the London 2012 venue.

"I’m hoping London is not going to be the first one," adds Brownlee, who has already started to swim and cycle as part of his comeback. "I’m hoping at least to make it back for the European Championships, which are three weeks before London. Ideally I’d even make it back for the one before that, the Madrid world series race on 5-6 June, so I could get in enough races to complete a whole series.

"But if I don’t, I don’t. Looking long term I have to get fit and healthy, and I want to be in a good, fairly fit position before I race. If the scan says the injury hasn’t healed, I might have to leave it longer. If it has healed, and then I build up too quickly, then I could have two weeks off because I’ve strained a muscle. You can’t have set plans at this stage."

Brownlee admits he found the early days of his injury difficult to deal with. "It was two weeks of doing pretty much nothing," he says with a rueful grin. "I just can’t do nothing."

So he took the opportunity to go off for a fortnight’s holiday with friends in Florida. But when he got back, the emptiness of his position registered.

"Your go from a life which has been full of exercise to having absolutely nothing, and then you think, ‘wow!’ Your life becomes really empty. You realise what a sad life you lead - it’s like, ‘Bloody hell! You’ve got nothing. What are you supposed to do?’

"I’ve been able to start swimming now, and I’ve been cycling for a few weeks. I hope I can start running over the next few weeks if the scan’s all right. But it’s running you’ve got to be most careful of. You’ve got to build up really slowly, like a minute at a time…" He grins again. "Which you can’t really do anyway. You can’t really do much worth doing."

The frustration is acute for an athlete whose course was set towards full-time triathlon during 2006, when he enjoyed both sporting and academic success, winning the English schools cross-country title and then the world junior triathlon title before earning a place at Girton College, Cambridge to study medicine.

"It was a funny time," he recalls. "When I got into Girton it didn’t feel like so much of an achievement as winning the world junior title did. Although I worked hard for my A-levels, I wasn’t really trying to get into Girton, whereas I had worked for two years to win the world juniors race, and it felt like a big achievement.

"Sport was what I loved anyway, and I started getting some offers as well, a bit of sponsorship. I thought ‘I actually can make a bit of money and make a living out of this, out of doing what I really love doing anyway.’"

So, you wonder, did he know as soon as got to Cambridge that he had possibly gone off in wrong direction?



"Yeah, I think so," he responds. "I went, and my parents were behind me, saying at least try it, I would regret it if I didn’t try it and it might work out. At least you know then. It was a great experience in a way and I’m really glad I did try it, but it confirmed as much as anything that sport, and triathlon, is what I really want to do."

That said, this serial achiever is currently doing an MSc in Finance at Leeds Metropolitan University, having gained a Physiology and Sport degree at the University of Leeds.

Inevitably, the prospect of London 2012 must be in the minds of all of Britain’s leading athletes. How, you ask, does Brownlee deal with it, particularly in his current frustrating circumstances?

"I don’t try and deal with it as such,” he responds. “I don’t think about it an awful lot, although it’s always there, I kind of know its there. I suppose as much as anything it keeps coming into your consciousness because people ask you about it all the time.

"I think I’m much more short term, taking one thing as it comes. I keep saying, hopefully, if you meet your short term goals and you’re improving it’s all on the path to the Olympics. Even if it isn’t on a direct path, it becomes the path."

While Brownlee faces the challenge of recovering and rejoining this year’s competitive schedule, his younger brother Jonathan, who last season won European junior gold and world junior silver, is facing the prospect of his first year in the senior ranks.

As Brownlee senior acknowledges, having his younger sibling around certainly maintains the standards as they train in their beloved Yorkshire environs.

"Jonathan and I are very competitive, since we were really young," Brownlee recalls. "I think we are both lucky that we really love triathlon, and have parents who have always supported our careers."

Brownlee senior’s career, he acknowledges, took a substantial uplift when he won last year’s Hyde Park race en route to taking the world title.

"To me personally if I was going to win any that was going to be the biggest one," he says.

"It was massive in terms of raising my profile here because it was on live television, I had family and friends watching, and it was in front of British spectators and British sponsors."

On the question of whether it is going to be helpful for London 2012 to have won on the Hyde Park course, Brownlee ponders for a moment, before breaking into another engaging grin.

"Ummm…no," he says with a laugh. "I think a race is a race. And the Olympics is completely different to any other races, so it probably won’t be a great help, although there will be a little bit of confidence about saying you’ve won there before.

"You never know, though. The next two years might be absolute disasters, so you can’t say too much!"

What is certain is that, as soon as he is properly fit, Brownlee, whose spare and youthful appearance belies his resilience as a world class competitor, will relish returning to his familiar training runs.

"As a triathlete you spend so much time on outside training, so the environment you are in is really, really important. You want to be inspired by your surroundings, and you want to go out and be motivated training in nice places.

"I like to run anywhere around Otley Chevin. I suppose my favourite run would be on a great hill called Great Whernside, which is at the top of Wharfedale."

And which, coincidentally, is capped by millstone grit.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]